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Crooks Nab Citibank ATM Codes, Steal Millions
An anonymous reader writes "Citibank is reissuing ATM cards following a December server breach in which hackers stole customer PIN codes, Wired reports. In recent months the FBI has arrested 10 people in the New York area who were allegedly involved in using the codes to steal over $2 million from Citibank checking and savings accounts, including two Ukrainian immigrants who were each caught with $800,000 in cash stashed in boxes and shopping bags in their homes. Some of the suspects are cooperating, telling the feds that they've been working for a Russian hacker. They use magstripe writers to encode the stolen account numbers onto blank cards, then hit ATMs in New York, and transfer 70% of the loot back to Russia."
Authorities report that the two Ukrainians, identified as cousins Niko and Roman Bellic, were released from police custody after police confiscated their guns and took 10% of their money. The pair subsequently stole several cars and went on a killing spree with an RPG they found on a nearby rooftop.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In Soviet Russia, the ATM robs you
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
two Ukrainian immigrants who were each caught with $800,000 in cash stashed in boxes and shopping bags in their homes.
I assume the boxes and bags all had big dollar signs on the side of them.
Also, I'm extremely impressed that TFS (I didn't RTFA, of course) had no incidents of "ATM machine" or "PIN number".
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
...other than just a pin code?
/. have any ideas?
Maybe it's just me, but a simple 4 digit number doesn't provide all that much security in my mind. How easy is it to simply glance over someone's shoulders and read their pin? Aren't there any means of verifying user identity in a quick secure manner?
I know that some banks will send their users a text message with a confirmation code, but this seems a bit inconvenient (cell battery can die, text can take a long time to arrive, etc.). Anyone on
It seems clear that insider fraud is responsible. PIN codes are not afaik transmitted anywhere, they are checked locally by the terminal, not sent to any server. The fact that Citibank are taking respobsibility for the fraud is unusual, if PIN codes are stolen they would normally try to blame the customer first. What probably happened is that an insider stole the PIN codes and account information being sent to new card users and provided these to accomplices who used them to create fake cards.
yet only in June do they issue new pins? Nice.
...that with the U.S. Dollar in the shitter, the Russians would start picking on someone else.
Ok, I'm Canadian so I could be very wrong, but it certainly seems that Citibank is regularly the target of hackers/phishers/scammers. I often get emails from Citibank asking me to update my account information (obviously, I don't have an account...) but other banks seem to be subject to similar attacks far less often. Were I American, methinks I'd be picking just about any bank other than Citibank...
From the article: "...What's more, neither Citibank nor the third-party transaction processor involved in the breach has warned consumers to watch for fraudulent withdrawals, raising questions about the disclosure policies in the financial industry. Citibank spokesman Robert Julavits says the bank "has complied with all applicable notification requirements."
But according to the Payment Card Industry's own rules and the disclosure laws of NY, in the event of a breach the company must follow these rules:
* Notification: Most expedient time possible, without unreasonable delay
* Civil or criminal penalty for failure to promptly disclose
So in other words they were more than happy to keep this secret to themselves.
I have a Bank of America ATM card that has a six-digit PIN. The really interesting thing, though -- which I discovered by accident -- is that on Bank of America ATMs you can simply enter the first four digits and then as many random digits as you want and the code works.
In other words, say my PIN is 443672. I can enter 4436, 44367, or 4436987899979 and it will always work. This seems like a fairly serious security flaw, to me.
I know what you're thinking: "Sounds like you really only have a 4-digit PIN." But no! On other kinds of machines, say at the supermarket, I always have to enter in all 6 digits accurately. It's only Bank of America ATM machines where this is true.
In the past, I have thought about raising this issue with Bank of America, but I have no idea how to approach them such that I can speak to somebody clueful.
Breakfast served all day!
Disclaimer: I just joined the company that has dreamt up this stuff..
For the use of biometrics to be safe you need the following conditions:
1 - it must still be a combination of what you KNOW and what you have. The solution is to name the fingers, i.e. think of a word like "fox" and then give a character to each finger. Only you know which finger you have called "f", "o" and "x".
2 - biometrics are yours. They have no place in a central database where anyone can make a mess by replacing or erasing them, and what isn't stored cannot be abused. Thus: using biometrics to replace PIN code is fine by me, provided it stays local to the device. In other words, the prints are a device/token enabler, not the actual method of authentication and/or authorisation. Oh, and the relevant storage area should not be accessible other than by the token comparator engine - export MUST be made verifiably impossble.
3 - "detached" and fake fingerprints should be rejected. Solution: don't be a cheapskate when you build this stuff and use the best, RF based reader. Even if you make the fake prints conductive it's going to be VERY hard (we've tried).
Biometrics are good because you can't forget them. But they're yours, and yours only.
Insert
Whew, I'm glad to know that our business partners are secure. Our business just decided to use "Citi", and they have assured us that they are secure. Oh - wait, isn't Citi the same as "CitiBank"?
On the more serious side: They insist on using REAL customer data for testing, their test systems are not in sync with production, their test practices are VERY bad....
It comes as no surprise that they've had a break-in.
You keep the ones with the dead presidents. I'll keep the others. I'll only insist on having the same number, to be fair. Deal?
I'm a Citibank customer here in New York and I am one of those who is getting their card reissued. Citibank did notify me of the breach through one of those alerts on their web site but the alert was several months after the breach was discovered (I got it on June 3rd to be precise). They didn't specifically mention the date of the incidents and I have no good way of validating all the charges to my ATM card. Pouring over several months of statements is not easy when you don't know what you are looking for.
In the alert they claim that a third party ATM network was breached but they didn't say which company's ATMs where hit. I even called and tried to find out but they wouldn't/couldn't tell me. The customer support person just kept saying "Sir, Your card was breached" as if the problem was with my ATM card. Here in NY there are tons of independent ATMs around which charge anywhere from $1-$3 for withdrawal (Maybe they could use some of those fees for security). If I knew which one f'ed up I would spend my withdrawal fees elsewhere.
Citi also botched sending me a new card twice so now they've disabled my old card and have yet to send me a new one. I guess I don't have to worry about those pesky fees for a while.
It's why I moved all my purchasing from debit to credit.
The dispute resolution for M/C is a lot easier:
"I didn't buy this."
"Okay, reversed."
vs. the bank:
"I didn't make that withdrawal."
"Well, we'll have to review the security tapes, check your whereabouts, and in 12-16 months, we'll credit your account."
Also, I get 1% cash back on the M/C. And no, I don't carry a balance.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
From the article:
Three months had passed since Citibank notified the FBI that a hacker managed to steal customer-account numbers and PIN codes, in an attack on a server that processes transactions from Citi-branded ATMs at 7-Eleven convenience stores. In late February and early March, the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service arrested two Ukrainian immigrants and two alleged co-conspirators for allegedly using the stolen PINs to steal $2 million in cash from unsuspecting Citibank customers.
Okay that answers the question on how they got the PINs. They didn't need the physical cards, they just hacked and got the bank account numbers with PINs. I'm going to guess that they let this go on to catch the bad guys, but THREE MONTHS? And obviously they weren't telling customers there had been a breach and that they should change their pin number.
Maybe that's one solution...at least for those of us who know better. A way to be able to go in and change your pin number on a regular basis. But it doesn't matter if you have 4-digit pin or a 16-digit PIN if the bank is going to keep the Acct. number together with the PIN.
I believe lawyers felt a shift in the Force.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
The EMV-card.
On this type of card, the magnetic strip is replaced by a microcontroller with various cryptographic features (aka smart card) that are supposed to secure transactions and make the card a PITA to clone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV
It is a quite recent innovation. It was only standardized oh ... 9 years ago, and its backers - VISA and Mastercard - are relatively unknown companies.
This is probably why many banks are wary about issuing EMV cards yet ... or that they are cheapskates. I'm not sure which.
You're confusing two issues: An ATM Withdrawal and a Purchase.
Any Debit Card with a Visa or MC logo carries fraud protection. They both require that funds be put back into your account within 5 business days, and many banks do it same-day, mine included. This includes provisions for overdrafts that happened because of the fraudulent deduction.
In fact, on the Visa website, you'll see that the Debit Card page and the CC page both point to the same "Zero Liability" page.
Of course, as I said, you confused 2 issues: Purchases and PIN-Based ATM withdrawals.
If you take a cash advance from your CC at an ATM using your PIN, it won't be so simple as "okay, reversed." It's their policy that its your duty to keep your PIN secure and secret. And that applies equally to both Credit and Debit cards.
Don't get me wrong -- I do the same thing you do. Every online purchase, and many offline, I use my Credit Card and pay it off when the statement comes. But I do it for the added benefits: Points, extra warranty on everything I buy, etc.
And because I don't always check my bank balances every day. My bank has refunded fraudulent debit card purchases for me twice, and the money was back in my account within an hour or so, but I worry about the time that I don't check it for a couple days and the money isn't there when I need it. Sure, the bank will fix it promptly, but that doesn't help if I have a cart full of groceries.
Not to mention, the worst thing that could happen if your CC is fraudmeistered is that you can't charge anything until it's fixed. There's a lot more headache involved if your checking acct was just drained.
But I wouldn't worry about fraud response from banks. Visa and Mastercard are literally making BILLIONS off Americans using the debit cards in place of cash. They don't want to scare you off.
My parents took out a Sears card about 5 years ago to get a deal on carpet and then put the card in the filing cabinet and left it. About 2 months ago they got a bill from Citibank stating that they purchased several thousand dollars of something in Paris. Turns out that Sears sold all their accounts off to Citibank. My father immediately called Citibank and they were absolute jerks. They couldn't understand that my Dad didn't even own a Citibank card (and had never been to Paris). Evidently, someone had gotten the number and activated the old Sears (now Citi) account. After several calls to the VERY rude customer support Dad simply drove to Citibank's fraud prevention unit which isn't very far from their home. Fraud prevention is run out of the Midwest and very helpful but the plain customer service people suck.
Further, Citibank's fraud detection must be absolutely horrible. If this was the same security breach, Citi didn't know about it even in March. Further, one large random charge in a foreign country on a card that hasn't been used in 5 years should raise some warning flags. In stark contrast, about two weeks ago Wells Fargo discovered fraud on my card. Turns out someone had my number and was testing its validity with online purchases. The sad sad sad thing is that the transaction that they found odd was a $1 purchase of a weight lifting dietary supplement. I guess even Wells Fargo knows I'm a geek.
Why have 1 person driving a backhoe when you could employ 20 with shovels?
I don't know enough about this to have a real opinion I guess, but I had sort of made the assumption that PINs worked like passwords in Linux and Windows - the server wouldn't know your password (PIN), but would know the HASH only. I guess these folks are saying that you can actually steal the PIN itself from a bank's server? I'd think it more likely that you could steal the hashes and then knowing that the PINs are generally 4 digit numbers, crack the hash. But if they directly store the PIN on their servers - that seems like a stupid idea.
My experience of them is that they will cut as many corners as possible in order to save money & that their internal people are very good at passing the buck to someone else.
It's not "sour grapes" on my part either - I walked away from them in the end because they were a nightmare to work with & have never looked back.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Citibank is not necessarily the company to be blaming for the breach... the article states that the actual source of the breach is unknown. Although, it would be quite ironic if the breach did occur on a Citibank server/database considering that the credit card companies drive the PCI-DSS standards that are supposed to be in place to avoid these breaches. The source of the breach obviously didn't meet the PCI compliancy requirements if the hackers had the PIN numbers (and the rest of the information) which is supposed to be encrypted.
Yes, that's how I read it, anyway. My understanding is that Visa doesn't make much money from PIN transactions, so they don't guarantee them. Goes back to the "Your PIN is your Responsibility" schtick.
Of course, I see more and more stores that actually give me an incentive to pay using a PIN-based transaction. The Jewel supermarkets around here give you 1% off your bill. I imagine that's because they're paying more than 1% to Visa when you sign. I can't imagine any other reason that they'd give you that much off!
Well, with only 10,000 possible pins, it wouldn't matter to store the hashes, because either would be trivial to break. Many ATM cards and systems support up to 6 digits, but it's not advisable to use them, because there are still a lot of machines that don't accept 6 digit pins. Either way, it would be trivially easy to generate the rainbow tables for every 6 digit numeric string.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Let me see here:
$2 million * .7 = $1.4 million. $2 million - $1.4 million = $600,000. And yet there was $1.6 million recovered in cash? Either they were welching on their 70% deal, were very slow to shipping that money back, or there was more like $5.3 million stolen by just these two. I suppose they could only pin on them the $2 million they had direct evidence for.
But if the two suckers who got caught took Citibank for at least $5 million, what do you suppose the clever ones who didn't get caught walked away with?
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara