Wells Fargo Web-Enables ATMs

smooth wombat writes "Wells Fargo has completed a five-year project to Web-enable its 6,200 ATMs in 23 states. Now the ATMS will be Windows based rather than OS/2 based. Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Inc., in Stamford, Conn., said the move to Windows-based systems is "not great news for the security of the system. I'm sure there's a lot of holes that will be created because of this.""

Comments

was a change required?

[Frogmum]

What was wrong with OS/2 atms?

Re:was a change required?

[ceejayoz]

No one sells 'em anymore, at least not in the quantities Wells-Fargo needs.

Re:was a change required?

[rsmoody]

I asked that myself when the bank I work for started upgrading our ATM's to 3DES. Some are still OS/2 but some are windows bassed. And it uses regular Windows, not embeded, it's straight Windows 2000. To tell you the truth, I acutally liked the Windows based ATM. From a stand point of having to hold the tellers hand over the phone because they are not trained properly, it makes it easier on us because the Windows ATM actually have help screens and short movie clips that can walk the undertrained (read stupid) teller through the proceedure of properly inserting a cassette of money (as if it were that difficult). The OS/2 ATMs are only character menu driven, the Windows ATM's are all graphical. The actual screens the customer sees are actually web pages so it's easy to make them look how you want and not be a programmer.

Re:was a change required?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a financial services provider that has about 100 ATMs in the field. They're from Diebold, and up until very recently, they ran OS/2. Why'd we switch? Well, first of all, Diebold does not provide NEW machines that run anything other than Windows, so if you are doing a major deployment, and you buy from Diebold, you're getting Windows. Second of all, the industry is moving to 3DES at gunpoint (that gun wielded by our friends at Visa and MasterCard) and Diebold only supports 3DES on Windows-based ATMs.
Now, it's true that you don't have to TCP/IP-connect a Windows-based ATM, you can operate it solely over SNA or SDLC or whatever you have -- but if you do you don't get all the features of the ATM, and not just the annoying things like HTML-based UI -- you don't get the handy stuff like remote management which means that you spend $$ sending humans out to the site rather than just doing task 'x' from your network.

Just what I want....

[AtariAmarok]

...having to kill a couple dozen pop-up windows when I want to take $20 out of the ATM.

However, come to think of it, a lot of those things would look better with that Aquarium Screensaver. I think I'll click on the ok download button next time.

Putting ATMs on the Web

[Anonymous Coward]

What could possibly go wrong?

Hello, I am Govermet Minster

[tbuckner]

Gretings, I am Govermet Minster of Nigeria, and if you send me your PIN you wil share 20% of 1.3 milion American US dolars that I must retrive. THis wil only take a moment since you are already at your ATM.

Re:Yes, but...

[marvin2k]

So you are saying that Microsoft has no problems making the embedded version secure and they introduce the holes in XP just for fun? I fail to see how Microsofts track record should make me go "Ohhh, it the *embedded* version. In that case I trust your security completely!"

Well Fargo Drive in Movies!

[nilbog]

Wells Fargo is moving to windows so they can run video on the ATM screens. They want to run traileras and MSNBC tickers. OS/2 doesn't have that capability.

It's good too, because I needed a place to see MSNBC tickers and movie trailers and also get money at the same time.

Now that this has rolled out on all Wells Fargo ATM's, they will allow you to watch full movies on them and will be opening concession stands. If you pull up to an ATM, and the car in front of you has the windows all fogged up ... it might be a while.

s-l-o-w ATM keypad

[anadem]

am I the only one who finds the new Wells Fargo ATM key response time to be laggardly?

After I enter my pin, the beep sound and the asterisk that's displayed take so long that I think i've miskeyed, so press again getting a double entry which i have to cancel and slowly and carefully retry.

Is it because of being Windowized, or just bad programming? The old OS/2 ATMs responded instantly.

My ATM had crashed - UK

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to the hole in the wall (ATM) and it was displaying a windows taskbar, a dos window with some process running with a dos full stop sequence progress meter and another McAfee window - I asked in the bank and they said it had been on and off all morning and an "engineer" was trying to fix it.

I remember a /. article on UK banks going ove to windoze but I never thought i'd see the day.

Was I ever laughing.

I wonder if my atm card has a virus by now. ;-)

PS It was Bank of Scotland

Well I guess an OS and their money are easyily restarted.

Slow a**holes in line

[mhesseltine]

Great. As if waiting for some jerk to

• Check his balance
• transfer funds
• buy stamps

wasn't bad enough, now I have to wait for him to

• Check his email
• view stock quotes
• Play a game of Bejeweled
• Install BonziBuddy
• view some pr0n

os/2 everywhere

[Lys0l]

I used to work for IBM in OS/2 TCP/IP support. People would be amazed at how much OS/2 is still out there. Banking, industry, CIA, NSA, Vatican Bank, etc. Heart/Lung machines, ATM machines and the machines that make fritos. When OS/2 went down at friot-lay, no more fritos...not good times. I'm sad to see it go, it was great for apps such as these.

Re:os/2 everywhere

[WillerZ]

The reason OS/2 hasn't been EOL'd yet is that you need an OS/2 box if you want to start a mainframe (you can IPL it from the terminal, but to get from powered-off to powered-on you need OS/2). At least up to 2003 if you bought a zSeries box you got 2 OS/2 thinkpads inside it on shelves (I haven't poked around in any of our newer zSeries kit).

For the curious, they're needed to tell each zSeries processor what it is. This isn't as dumb as it sounds, because each of the 16 processors can do one of 4 tasks depending on the microcode you load into it.

You need a fairly dependable OS for this job, and when I last asked them they didn't trust Windows or Linux to do it right.

They weren't deemed helpful enough

[ackthpt]

What was wrong with OS/2 atms?

They weren't helpful enough, Well Fargo ATM customers can now look forward to the ATM Assistant(TM)!

"Hi, I'm Clippy, would you like help:

Depositing Funds?

Withdrawing Funds?

Transfer your entire balance to r00m4n14n d00d?

Selecting the proper brick to smash my keyboard with?

Yet somehow, it does.

[mcc]

Existing Windows XP embedded based ATMs, made by Diebold, have already been effected by Windows XP-targetting worms. This should be sufficient to demonstrate that the code bases at least share whatever code caused vulnerability to the Nachi worm. The obvious question then becomes, if and when further holes in Windows XP are discovered, what happens if they too are in the code shared with Windows XP Embedded?

I mean, it's just an awfully funny coincidence that the sudden emergence of the term "cyber-crime" in connection with ATMs just happens, after all these years of computer ATMs, to coincide with the introduction of Windows based ATMs.

And I somehow suspect that in five years, when WinXPEmbedded ATMs are everywhere, if anyone observes it as odd that how ATMs suddenly have a security track record now, we'll have people saying "oh that's just part of the technology, there's nothing you can do about it, it would be the same with any other vendor"...

And for those trying to pry the computer box...

[game kid]

Clippy would pop up and say...

It looks like you are attempting to rob this ATM.

Would you like help?

• Get me therapy by
  dialing 911
• Just send the FBI,
  I can take them
  with my bare hands

(Cancel)

Clippy says.....

[MSDos-486]

"I see you have used this ATM before. Would you like me to remember your PIN so you won't have to enter it again?"