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Gang Used 3D Printers To Make ATM Skimmers
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a post by security researcher Brian Krebs:
"An ATM skimmer gang stole more than $400,000 using skimming devices built with the help of high-tech 3D printers, federal prosecutors say. ... Apparently, word is spreading in the cybercrime underworld that 3D printers produce flawless skimmer devices with exacting precision. Last year, i-materialize blogged about receiving a client's order for building a card skimmer. In June, a federal court indicted four men from South Texas whom authorities say had reinvested the profits from skimming scams to purchase a 3D printer."
When a 3d printer can make a decent skimming device (or disguise one) you can't help but think the system is truly broken. Computer security has progressed in leaps and bounds - it isn't perfect and it certainly isn't idiot proof. But banks are still using hand written signatures and easily faked devices while all but ignoring the risk. Heck they're introducing pinless low value transactions at shopping centers in Australia. I'm ANNOYED that my card can be used without either a signature or a pin number verification being used. It means there's significant risk that me or my wife lose a credit card and don't immediately discover it, we'll be up for a very large sum of money. And even if we're not, we won't have access to the money while the issue is resolved.
It's not sustainable. The banks need to be held more accountable.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
... that CAMERAS can actually be used to take pictures of naked people?!
It's foolish to blame the tool for the crime. That takes people.
I've always wondered what the economics of the world of cheap, prolific, effective 3D printers is like. If anyone can create basically any material good, what's the economics of that place like?
Star Trek had replicators, which could basically make anything, even food or water (except for a few things which were a de-facto currency). They were basically communists, which doesn't work with people being people but might work if anyone could create whatever they wanted.
But what about things that can't be replicated/printed? Like electricity, or land for housing, or water/food? Trek says that water and food are replicable, but with our current 3D printers obviously we can't make that just yet unless you can eat plastic.
What's the economy of the western world going to look like if the only thing we need is material for 3D printers, power, land, food and water? Will provision of the un-replicable become the job of the state?
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
I was having a discussion with my daughter (an artist) the other day about protecting her work, and much of what we discussed applies to this technology--when you get right down to it, the moment you convert any product into a digital format, and expose it to the internet in any way, you lose a great deal of control of that creation, if not all.
This technology is about to do that to physical objects, by proxy--the dimensions are what are actually being digitized. The end result will be the same though--freely available physical products. The only catch is that the user must provide the physical medium...kind of like someone providing a blank CD in order to utilize an MP3 file. I predict that, one day, the king of "most downloaded" torrents will be a 3D printer file for a bong.
This is the same genie that the recording/electronics industries let out of its bottle about 28 years ago. He appears to be having much adventure and does not wish to return to his bottle. Ever.
Yeah! Let's print oysters.
...download a car. And print it!
return $sig;
Used for illegal purposes? BAN 3D PRINTERS. And cassette tapes. And knives!
Z