Hackers Break Currency Validator To Pass Any Paper As Valid Euro

Trailrunner7 writes "If espionage is the world's second-oldest profession, counterfeiting may be in the running to be third on that list. People have been trying to forge currency for just about as long as currency has been circulating, and anti-counterfeiting methods have tried to keep pace with the state of the art. The anti-counterfeiting technology in use today of course relies on computers and software, and like all software, it has bugs, as researchers at IOActive discovered when they reverse-engineered the firmware in a popular Euro currency verifier and found that they could insert their own firmware and force the machine to verify any piece of paper as a valid Euro note. 'The impact is obvious. An attacker with temporary physical access to the device could install customized firmware and cause the device to accept counterfeit money. Taking into account the types of places where these devices are usually deployed (shops, mall, offices, etc.) this scenario is more than feasible.'"

Comments

Re:Firmware update? Unlikely.

[Baloo Uriza]

And yet, it still surprises me how many places that have called my company for service see me arrive on site holding a clipboard, a cardboard carton, and a toolpouch full of screwdrivers, and automatically assume that I'm there to fix critical equipment touching customer data without so much as checking my paperwork, much less checking ID. People are stupid. This trick could very easily work in plain sight.