More ATM Trouble: Scammer Innovations Boost Risk Sid Kirchheimer - AARP.org
go to original November 1, 2015

On the heels of findings that skimming attacks recently hit a 20-year high comes even more risk at ATMs thanks to innovations by evil-genius crooks.

The first whammy: a new breed of wafer-thin card-reading “insert skimmers” placed directly into the mouth of ATMs, making them harder to detect than old-school, sometimes-obtrusive devices planted on the front or back of the slot. One type, found in Mexico, reads data on newer, more secure chip-enabled cards. It’s called a shimmer because it wedges “between the chip on the card and the chip reader in the ATM, recording the data on the chip as it is read by the ATM,” explains respected cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs.

Krebs, whose posts are worth reading regularly (he broke news of the infamous Target breach), also details other insert-skimmer innovations, including another stealthier-than-ever type found in an ATM in Europe.

“Of course, an insert skimmer alone isn’t going to capture your PIN,” he notes. “For that, thieves typically rely on cleverly hidden tiny cameras. Often, the spy camera is tucked inside a false panel above or directly beside the PIN pad. Crooks often get very creative, hiding cameras behind things like convex mirrors or even phony fire alarms.”

Read the rest at AARP.org

Photo: Eva Katalin Kondoros/iStock

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