Security experts took merely 5 minutes to drill a hole in the front of an ATM, just below the card read and access a usb slot where they can then load their own software and have the machine dispense money in seconds.
Not only cash can be collected, but they can also take the details of the card holders who are using the machine when they remove their usb stick.
Leigh-Anne Galloway, a security expert with Positive Technologies, told the BBC about these simple USB malware attacks and how, somewhat alarmingly, Windows XP is used to run mostly all ATMs, which are essentially “just a safe with a computer on top”.
“So you could put malware on this system that could collect data from cards as well”, Ms Galloway said.
“So that would be information that’s held on our cards as well. So if I as a consumer am using this machine it could collect my card data”.
“And that could spread around the whole network of ATMs”, she said.
I can related as for myself when I have been traveling through South East Asia - far to many times I have encountered a dusty old ATM, screen bleached from the sun, only able to just make out the blue screen of death or in a endless cycle. That familiar green hills of windows XP and start button flickering up.
In 2016 an alleged European based gang where able to hack the government savings bank of Thailand with a similar based technique in which the malware was able to spread through the ATM network infecting 22 machines and netting a withdrawal of approximately 12 million baht ($359k)
Will the financial institutions begin looking at upgrading their outdated computers in the near future? Or couldn't they just disable the usb ports? 😂