Infected ATMs Give Away Millions of Dollars Without Credit Cards
An anonymous reader writes: Kaspersky Lab performed a forensic investigation into cybercriminal attacks targeting multiple ATMs around the world. During the course of this investigation, researchers discovered the Tyupkin malware used to infect ATMs and allow attackers to remove money via direct manipulation, stealing millions of dollars. The criminals work in two stages. First, they gain physical access to the ATMs and insert a bootable CD to install the Tyupkin malware. After they reboot the system, the infected ATM is now under their control and the malware runs in an infinite loop waiting for a command. To make the scam harder to spot, the Tyupkin malware only accepts commands at specific times on Sunday and Monday nights. During those hours, the attackers are able to steal money from the infected machine.
If you have access to the ATM physically, why not just take the cash there and then?
ftesfrd
Less content, later: Slashdot
Sounds like something everybody could just do, right?
Man, this reads like a movie script. Gotta say these criminals are pretty inventive.
Now somebody telle me how the hell did these guys get physical access to the ATMs. I mean it's not like they can insert the cd and reboot the machine from the outside. They have to get inside the bank no ? What happened, all people inside were sleeping or what ? I don't understand
I remember back when XP was officially discontinued there was some article that said something like 70% of ATM machines worldwide still ran XP. Anyone able to confirm if this is the case? If so, are they exploiting some vulnerability in XP that is never-to-be-patched?
Could it be detected by the power used?
and without soup cans, and without traffic lights, and without elephant trunks, and without any other irrelevant items either.
they aren't worth worrying about. the USD is king.
BREAKING NEWS!
Someone reprograms a machine to do something else, and it does it! More at 11:00!
Why does an ATM have a cd drive, let alone usb ports or anything else? Why does it boot off of media without altering the BIOS and requiring a password? Why isn't the OS encrypted making modification require more difficult techniques like bootkits which has other protection mechanisms?
nt
So your banks ATM's are losing millions of dollars without any audit information showing them coming out of an account, and you don't notice?
these weren't cybercriminals, just criminals. They physically broke open ATM machines.
> Infected ATMs Give Away Millions of Dollars Without Credit Cards
http://www.atmmarketplace.com/news/number-of-atms-worldwide-expected-to-hit-15-million-in-december/
So like.. $1 per ATM. That doesn't sound like much to me.
Probably covered by ATM fees. :(
When the ATM is rebooting, would be a good time to mark the camera footage as in need of review.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So long as they aren't accessing working people's bank accounts, I'm surprisingly okay with this and hope they don't get caught. It's not like the banks wouldn't find some other excuse to raise my service charges. Or just plain seize my accounts during times of crisis.
So, go bank robbers!
Though...
Not sure I'd want to risk being destroyed over a bunch of funny money.
Being a bank robber seems like just another flavor of servitude. You're agreeing to value their make-believe money system by risking your 'freedom' for it.
If you want to steal BIG, you have to own the bank - just ask those guys on Wall Street.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Seems to be an inside job. are the ATM attendants not required to sign in to install software?? Asking because I don't have a clue but common since in this day and age would require some kinda employees key to install anything onto or on any ATM.
Jack of all trades,master of none
So a dumb terminal has an entire copy of MS Windows instead of WinCE or a cast of thousands of non-MS options, and due to that it has a huge attack surface despite only doing a very limited job. An ATM should be simple and locked down since all it's doing is being an input device to a server and getting instructions from the server to spit out cash. It's obvious. Sleazy deals where one bit of MS cuts into the market of a different bit of MS are the only reason why such stupidity happens and you get a desktop computer doing the job of an embedded device.
"Kaspersky Lab performed a forensic investigation into cybercriminal attacks targeting multiple ATMs around the world"
See, slashdot, wasn't difficult to mention the actual Operating System. ref
Don't most people use a bank card / ATM card / debit card to withdraw money, and not a credit card? I know you can get the option of taking out cash on a credit card, but aren't debit cards the norm?
it says millions but how long was this going on.what they likely did was take small amounts from many machines over times not to raise flags say if one was missing 1000$ you can bet they would adult it but if its 5 or 10$ not so much.
Watch Dogs... anyone?
Now that the accounts have been hacked, the ATMs can be set up to dispense their cash. The foreign banks themselves could be the criminals.
The ATM was running windows and protected by McAfee Antivirus -- please excuse me while I go laugh.