ATMs that just spit out money – Nice!

Arian Eigen Heald Profile: Arian Eigen Heald

As you may know, one of my favorite posting topics has to do with ATMs. I call them Automatic Theft Machines because there are way too many stories of equipment being hacked, and/or swiping hardware being installed, or people just driving away with them.

Well, along comes a story about the progression of this issue: In Eastern Europe, the bad guys have perfected the art of getting the machine to spit out all its money on demand.

According to the article (linked above), authorities say there must be some sort of inside access to allow software to be installed. The articles claims that after unlocking the security, the inside equipment is quite vulnerable.

Hmmm, hard on the outside, yummy and soft on the inside….where have we heard that before? And something else interesting to note: many of the ATMs appear to be Diebolds; the same company that makes voting machines for us……and was implicated in another attack earlier this year, also in Eastern Europe.

The ATMs utilize a scaled down version of Windows XP, which actually doesn’t make me feel any better at all.

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