Slashdot Mirror
Kids With Operators Manual Alert Bank Officials: "We Hacked Your ATM"
An anonymous reader writes "Two 14-year-olds hacked a Bank of Montreal ATM after finding an operators manual online that showed how to gain administrative control. Matthew Hewlett and Caleb Turon alerted bank employees after testing the instructions on an ATM at a nearby supermarket. At first the employees thought the boys had the PIN numbers of customers. 'I said: "No, no, no. We hacked your ATM. We got into the operator mode,"' Hewlett was quoted as saying. Then, the bank employees asked for proof. 'So we both went back to the ATM and I got into the operator mode again,' Hewlett said. 'Then I started printing off documentations like how much money is currently in the machine, how many withdrawals have happened that day, how much it's made off surcharges. Then I found a way to change the surcharge amount, so I changed the surcharge amount to one cent.'"
Years ago, when ATMs were first becoming available, someone I know worked as a security exec for a large bank. Seems back then, each ATM came with a demo disk hat, when inserted into a floppy disk port inside the ATM's housing (but, easily accessed) placed the machine into demo mode and allowed the operator full control of the device. The sales operator could then fully demonstrate ALL the features of the ATM - including the automatic dispensing of cash.
With furled eyebrows, he asked whatever became of all the demo disks after the ATM was installed..nobody knew...just assumed they were thrown out. He asked if they considered this a problem. And, he was told 'No'. At the time, stealing the ATM was all the rage and his concerns were discounted...until one day when money just started disappearing from ATMs. Seems, somebody else found or had one of those disks and realized what they had.
Pretty scary these kids could find a manual online and that the command sequence to place it into admin mode could be done from the user console vs a separate terminal. One has to wonder if they could have dispensed cash like a Pez dispensor like was possible with the old demo disks.
When Verizon FiOS first came to my area, the autogenerated WEP password was based on a 5 character SSID. There were online tools that you could use to lookup what the default password would be and almost no one, relatively speaking, bothered to change it from the default. Came in handy on more than a few occasions to get free wifi as just about anywhere you go you were in range of someone that had FiOS.
Another brand used the wireless MAC as the WEP key. shm