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Another ATM Maker Pwned by Googling
bagsc writes "Kevin Poulsen of Wired.com strikes fear into another ATM manufacturer. This time, Triton ATMs had their super-secret master codes revealed by simple Google searches. Tranax was the most recent company with this problem, but probably not the last."
Ok, so people have been hacking pr0n sites, coke machines, etc, for years, but with a bit of warning ATM companies can't manage to practice a bit of security?
Even if it IS stupid user error, then BANKS can't get their act together?!?!
This just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about Diebold, etc.
Bottom line, this is a perfectly routine default password issue. Blame your bank.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
A default password that is MEANT to be CHANGED ASAP is not supersecret. It's in the fucking
manual and even if the manual is not on the web then you can probably order one from the
manufacturer and they wont make sure you even purchased the ATM to go with it.
The real news is that the people who set ATMs up and operate them are as dumb as dog shit.
UUuuuuh secret password! Uuuuuuh!
Listen up kids, "owned", "pwned", "h4x0red", "l33t", was interesting for about 5 minutes 5 years ago, now it's over. Stop using them, it's pathetically annoying. Try using some proper English for once. For the love of shit, even Penny-Arcade makes fun of this crap, and it's a video game based web comic.
OK, so you have a machine full of money that will be placed out in public, where everyone and his third cousin Fingers McCrackit can play Billy Joel on the keyboard all day, using any information they can guess, beg, borrow, or steal (OK, slight exaggeration, but valid principle.)
Now, just HOW STUPID do you need to be to make it possible in the first place to gain system access from that keyboard without at least one hardware interlock that is NOT accessible without the key to the machine? You KNOW the bad guys will try everything they can think of to fool the machine; you should ASSUME that they have every piece of info on the machine that you do. (Cryptosystems -- good ones, at least -- are designed on this assumption; indeed, they assume that the adversary has a copy of your machine and all its specifications.)
A secure ATM thus REQUIRES that it be made completely IMPOSSIBLE to jigger the machine without physically getting inside its hardware. Password-protection just doesn't cut it for that level of security. Failure to provide this level of protection is SO stupid as to be a failure to exercise due care. And after all, how much does it cost to add that hardware interlock switch? Not much compared to the value of the ATM's contents...
Now for the scary part -- ATMs are, on average, far more secure than voting machines.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
It's been made clear throughout the last three decades that people who should know better don't change the default password. Routers, firewalls have had this problem. Various incarnations of Unix have had this problem. VMS had this problem! Yes, people should change the default password, but in the interest of security, we should make them do it on first boot. OpenBSD makes you set up a complex root password after install.
People don't wear seatbelts, either, which is why we have such seemingly inane things like seatbelt laws. This is clearly a test for rationality. Because apparently dying isn't bad enough but being punished is. People are stupid.
Theft is theft is theft is theft.
Beware of the Leopard.