Why ATM Bombs May Be Coming Soon To the United States

HughPickens.com writes Nick Summers has an interesting article at Bloomberg about the epidemic of 90 ATM bombings that has hit Britain since 2013. ATM machines are vulnerable because the strongbox inside an ATM has two essential holes: a small slot in front that spits out bills to customers and a big door in back through which employees load reams of cash in large cassettes. "Criminals have learned to see this simple enclosure as a physics problem," writes Summers. "Gas is pumped in, and when it's detonated, the weakest part—the large hinged door—is forced open. After an ATM blast, thieves force their way into the bank itself, where the now gaping rear of the cash machine is either exposed in the lobby or inside a trivially secured room. Set off with skill, the shock wave leaves the money neatly stacked, sometimes with a whiff of the distinctive acetylene odor of garlic." The rise in gas attacks has created a market opportunity for the companies that construct ATM components. Several manufacturers now make various anti-gas-attack modules: Some absorb shock waves, some detect gas and render it harmless, and some emit sound, fog, or dye to discourage thieves in the act.

As far as anyone knows, there has never been a gas attack on an American ATM. The leading theory points to the country's primitive ATM cards. Along with Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and not many other countries, the U.S. doesn't require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM. Encryption chip requirements are coming to the U.S. later this year, though. And given the gas raid's many advantages, it may be only a matter of time until the back of an American ATM comes rocketing off.

Comments

Positive pressure?

[__aaltlg1547]

How about you don't seal the back of the ATM but instead put vents on it and a blower continuously pushing fresh air in? If they thieves try to pump it full of explosive gas, it would blow back out.

Re:Positive pressure?

[bickerdyke]

Several manufacturers now make various anti-gas-attack modules: Some absorb shock waves, some detect gas and render it harmless,

Well, somehow I don't think those manufacturers haven't tried your idea yet. It's not about preventing this kind of attack would be particularly difficult - it just hasn't been neccessary so far.

Re: Positive pressure?

[rickb928]

Where I live, in the summer it gets to 115Â. Pumping in air will need a bigger A/C unit. Not worth it.

Re:Positive pressure?

[DigiShaman]

Not a bad idea actually. Using precision cutting, you could make numerous thin slits. Enough to vent the pressure while simultaneously keeping the box secure.

Another option maybe to create separate long ported vent chambers.

Re:Positive pressure?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depending on how motivated the thieves are, it may be more cost effective to have some shock-sensitive dye capsules embedded. Since they'd only be breached in the event of an attack(or really serious damage to the ATM from other sources) they could last the life of the machine and be entirely passive. If you were feeling particularly motivated, it would cost only a modest amount extra to get an ink with a unique tagging agent, per ATM, so that marked bills could be traced directly back to a specific attack.

If a lot of ATMs are being blown up, or attackers are unconcerned by dyed bills(maybe because of literal laundering, maybe there are people who don't care?), then active defensive measures are more likely to save enough hardware to be worth the cost. If not, a passive capsule or capsules fragile enough to break during an explosion are simple, low-maintenance, and a fair deterrent.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Kohath]

How about just a fan?

Re: Positive pressure?

[Immerman]

Who said anything about AC? The money doesn't care how warm it is, unless you're talking multiple hundreds of degrees. All you need is a sparkless ventilation fan.

Re:Positive pressure?

[schreiend]

Preventing the gas from filling the volume seems to be easier than trying to make the box explosion-proof. Just install a one-way valve into the money slot which will let the bills out but vent the gas outside. Alternatively, make a two-hatch, airlock-like slot. The probable reason something similar isn't done yet is that banks look for some dirt cheap solution; it may actually be cheaper to lose money while this kind of attack is infrequent.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that you have to vent the air because if you recycle it they will just use more gas.
And if you are venting air, then you are drawing in new air from outside and that new air has to be cooled.

Or you completely restructure your ATM installation to be outdoors, as it is now it is probably in conditioned space even if the user-facing part is outside.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Z00L00K]

A better idea - Add a large canister of ink in the money box. That's what they do over here in Sweden and it seems to limit the amount of bombings.

It's a higher risk to get skimmed at the ATM than to encounter a bombing.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Immerman]

Most ATMs I've seen are outside, or in small lobbies of their own. Kind of pointless to have an ATM that you can't access when the bank is closed. Rarely are they air conditioned. So vent the gas back at the user - if they want to blow *themselves* up in a useless attempt to get the money (it's the rear door that isn't strong enough to withstand the shock, right?), well then there's not much you can do to stop them anyway.

Re:Positive pressure?

[BitZtream]

That would be negative pressure, since you're sucking air out.

Also, related to the summary (not your comment):

The leading theory points to the country's primitive ATM cards. Along with Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and not many other countries, the U.S. doesn't require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM.

The theory is flat out wrong. If you still the ATM card, you have the encryption chip. So adding a chip to the card doesn't change this.

The encryption chip prevents CLONING the card, and has absolutely no effect what so ever on stealing the card. In fact, with the encryption chip, you must steal it to use it rather than whats done currently which is just cloning the card without the owner knowing.

Way to totally misunderstand the problem guys.

Re:Positive pressure?

[BitZtream]

heh: s/still the ATM/steal the ATM/

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just have a spark gap near the money pass through slot that fires once every second or so. This will ignite the oxy-acetylene mixture before enough can be pumped in to actually blow the door open. Once the first minor explosion occurs, there will be positive pressure in the cash box making the addition of more gas mixture difficult or impossible. An oxy-acetylene mixture cannot be compressed more than a few tens of pounds per square inch or it will self ignite, so filling the cash box will always be slow enough for this to work.

Re:Positive pressure?

[The Grim Reefer]

If they are already taking the time to pump acetylene into the ATM, what's to stop them from duct taping a few ventilation holes?

Re:Positive pressure?

[houghi]

The chip requires a PIN to be entered. If you don';t do that correctly within three times, the card is rendered useless.
And this does not have to be three consecutive times.

So even if you have the card, you are unable to do any purchases with it. And obviously you need to do them before the card is noticed to be stolen.

In Belgium the Card Stop number is on every ATM. You call them and the card is blocked. Any Belgian card. Loose your walled with 10 cards? One number to call. The number is even on every new sim-card in Belgium.

Re:Positive pressure?

[camperdave]

Can polymer bills be dyed?

Re: Positive pressure?

[TWX]

Around here, ATMs are freestanding outside under an overhang (typically for drivethrough) or are built into the side of a building (walk-up or drivethrough). It's exceedingly rare for an ATM to be indoors unless it's in a shopping center. It's hot here though, and it doesn't rain much and snows maybe once every 20 years, so there's little need to protect ATMs from the elements.

If you attempt to blow the gas back at the theives through vents on the sides of the ATM, they'll just start bringing plastic sheets with them. They'll run their hoses and their ignition wires, wrap the freestanding ATMs in plastic and tape it down, then fill it with gas and blow it.

I don't expect that bombing will be the method used here. I expect they'll simply steal a nice one-ton pickup, ram the ATM off its slab and smash it into the building, back up and ram it a few more times until it breaks open, then grab the cash boxes and go. Or they steal one with a liftgate, ram it off its foundation, load it into the truck, and drive off. That way there's no charges for arson or explosives.

Re: Positive pressure?

[rickb928]

The electronics do, and the compartment doesn't isolate them. No, it does not.

Re:Positive pressure?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You'd probably need to use a different formulation than for cotton or cellulose based bills; but I suspect so.

Based on a look at paints sold for use on plastics and vinyl(like this one), the strategy appears to be to use a suitably nasty solvent as a carrier for the pigment and have the solvent infiltrate the polymer's structure, carrying the pigment with it. In a case where you need not worry about damaging the polymer(unlike commercial plastic paints, where the solvent can't be so aggressive that it messes up the underlying material permanently), like tagging stolen bills, you could presumably be particularly aggressive in your formulation.

I don't know the chemistry of the polymer and the protective coatings in common use; but you can usually find a solvent that will do the trick, especially if you don't mind a bit of damage to the material being worked with.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

These anti-features also make it trivial for the government to monitor your transactions and in the USA where we have a president who is hell bent on confiscating our guns so he can subjugate us this is a no go. I'd sooner just hand my money to a regular theif than make it easy for the government to track my gun purchases, or any purchases for that matter. Mind you, bitcoin is going to make this all moot soon anyway.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Gizan]

So now all i have to do is wrap the atm in a single layer of shrink wrap?

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh that would be PERFECT. Now you've made a pulsejet. You feed in your fuel, it goes off right away, expands, exhausts, contracts, and pulls more in.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

I often hear the President is hell bent on confiscating our guns. I'd be interested to read an article so that I can direct others to it when I'm having conversations with others. Do you have a link that you can share?

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The link for that points to the same server that contains evidence of the death panels in Obamacare.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duct tape wouldn't do it. The tape is strong, but it's going to fail way before the steel that's being used for the safe.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, install a gas detector rigged up to a gun mounted in the ATM so that it kills the thieves.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Immerman]

If the electronics can't handle ambient outdoor temperatures, then I would suggest investing in better electronics.

Re:Positive pressure?

[StikyPad]

No. They's why they're all blank.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Cederic]

ATMs in the UK are also protected by ink - but I'd guess the ink release mechanisms are linked to shock/tilt triggers, rather than the back door being opened (even explosively).

Re:Positive pressure?

[khallow]

I'm aware of two sorts of evidence. First, there's the rhetoric used by the President, for example, "bitter clingers" speech and his statements about the Trayvon Martin shooting indicate he is at least in support of some sort of federal level gun control.

Second, there's the ATF Fast and Furious scandal. On the surface, it's supposedly a sting operation meant to uproot gun smuggling networks in the US in order to assist with the taming of the Cartel war in next door Mexico. In actuality, this sting delivered considerable material support to the Sinaloa Cartel, 2,000 guns guaranteed not to be intercepted plus whatever else the Cartel was able to smuggle out with those weapons (such as laundered money or more guns), a pretext (which turned out to be too flimsy when the scheme was revealed) for introducing additional regulations on gun purchases, and these guns turning up at over 200 murders in Mexico and the US and which are still turning up at crime scenes.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Out here in rainy pacific coast land, most ATM's come in two varieties:
1. In the wall , exposed to the elements, but sometimes there is a overhang. These are typically the ones that are built into older structures that were not originally banks, or shopping malls where the entrance to the bank is inside the mall, but has no outside entrance. The example I'm talking about is a credit union that used to be an A&W. (The A&W has moved three times since.)
2. ATM "Booth"'s, where you use your card (or sometimes no card) to open the door, and inside there's between 2 and 6 ATM's, usually right beside each other with a small partition. These don't actually require an ATM card to open the door, as any card will open the door. But it would make "bombing" an ATM harder. However anyone with a crowbar could just break through the door, and straight into the bank if they wanted to. These are more typical of purpose-built banks, and not converted from other buildings. These are also the most common around here, and generally the "room" is air conditioned since it shares the air space with the bank itself when it's open. If someone were to try and bomb one of these, it would likely result in extreme amounts of damage to the entrance of a bank, setting off security alarms.
3. "Armored" ATM's I've only ever seen this a few times, like #2 it's a "booth" type of ATM, but the entire front of the ATM except for the card slot is covered by a metal fire-door that rolls up once a card is inserted. This might have something to do with "bombing" problems in that community that also resulted in the post offices welding their drop-boxes shut and putting mailboxes outside the building.

What is interesting to note is that the problems that plague ATM's in one country are the same problems that plague mailboxes in others. Canada Post switched to community mailboxes, and the entire mailbox units are being stolen. Literately ripped out of the ground.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Andy Dodd]

Or use a solution that has been in use to handle sewer gases for years - vent pipe to the roof.

Re:Positive pressure?

[cheater512]

So...instead of pumping gas in, you just put it near the inlet vent and it sucks it in for you?

Even gives it a good mix with air for a better detonation.

Re:Positive pressure?

[cheater512]

Magnetic stripe + Signature = insecure.
Chip + Pin = A teensy little bit less insecure.

Over here in Australia, just a few months ago they removed signature as an option.
Every single credit card transaction must be PayWave or Chip + Pin.

Re:Positive pressure?

[wiredlogic]

Dyeing is less effective with polymer bills which are inherently easier to clean. The UK will transition to them soon.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget the early gas detected sparkplug....
jr

Re:Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

Doe not work. What the thieves need is about 3% gas concentration (above and below it does not explode) and that can still be done. At the same time, positive pressure has to come from somewhere and has a number of real problems.

Re:Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

Customers do not encounter ATM bombings. Banks do.

Re: Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

Seriously? Ever though about the electronics and mechanics in there? Apparently not.

Re: Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

Oh yeah, "if <thing you have no clue about> cannot handle <other thing you do not understand>", just demand that "they" fix it. Real mature.

Re:Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

And you think that has not been tried? You just insulted all the engineers working on ATMs as utterly stupid morons.

Re: Positive pressure?

[nobuddy]

Many, if not most, electronics can handle ambient temperatures far above what humans can endure. This is not your overclocked PC we are talking about.

Re:Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

You really have no clue how these attacks work. If you steal/clone a primitive obsolete card as used in the US, you can clone it cheaply and just try the pin on any number of not-online ATMs until you have it. (Many rural ATMs are not online over the weekend.) Then you clone a few more and go on an ATM tour, and this time they can be online. That does not work at all with chip-based cards.

Re:Positive pressure?

[nobuddy]

Are they blank? Of course they can be dyed.

Re: Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

Oh? Ever saw an ATM crash and display a BSOD? Quite often these are industrial PCs and they cannot take much more temperature as the CPUs are the limiting factor these days. And the mechanics have an even worse high-temperature behavior. It is not that things immediately stop to work, it is that every 10C halves the lifetime of components, and ATMs are _expensive_.

Re:Positive pressure?

[grep -v '.*' *]

Add a large canister of ink in the money box.

You're going to add a large canister of ink-jet ink over the money box?? MY GOD, that's worth more than the entire owning bank itself!

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck? The LEL for acetylene in air is 2.6% and the UEL is 100%. It explodes at virtually all concentrations.

Re:Positive pressure?

[lgw]

The chip requires a PIN to be entered. If you don';t do that correctly within three times, the card is rendered useless.
And this does not have to be three consecutive times.

So even if you have the card, you are unable to do any purchases with it.

Turns out: not so much. As was predicted by the security community, there are flaws, and after a couple years the flaws were exploited, and the PIN is retrievable. This cycle has repeated (is chip-and-PIN in its 3rd generation now? it's at least the second).

Chip-and-PIN means only that the bank makes you liable for your stolen money, claiming "the card couldn't possibly have been stolen because magic". It solves a problem for the banks, and makes it worse for the consumer - shocking, I know.

Re:Positive pressure?

[k.a.f.]

How about you don't seal the back of the ATM but instead put vents on it and a blower continuously pushing fresh air in? If they thieves try to pump it full of explosive gas, it would blow back out.

The point of an automated teller machine is to save the considerable cost of a human teller. Requiring more always-on moving parts incurs terrible running costs that would offset that gain.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plastic and tape? Someone has never tried to make a bomb. Sure it pops, it ain't breaking any metal though.

Re:Positive pressure?

[jeff4747]

Because sheets of plastic are not hard to acquire.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Acetylene is C2H2, and oxygen is O2, so you have:

2 C2H2 + 3 O2 => 4 CO2 + 2 H2O.

Acetylene is 26g/mol, and oxygen is 32g/mol. You need 2 moles of acetylene to 3 moles of diatomic oxygen. That's 52g acetylene to 96g diatomic oxygen. Acetylene's density is 1.1g/l and diatomic oxygen's density is 1.4g/l. 52g/(1.1g/l) = 47 liters acetylene. 96g/(1.4g/l) = 69 liters of diatomic oxygen. 47/69 = 0.68. Thus, you want approximately 0.68 liters of acetylene per liter of diatomic oxygen.

IANAC, take with a grain of NaCl.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoops, that's supposed to be 2 C2H2 + 5 O2 => 4 CO2 + 2 H2O, meaning you get 0.41 liters of acetylene to 1 liter of oxygen.

Stupid maths.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they do still use XP.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The chip requires a PIN to be entered.

Well actually it's pretty trivial to hack the cards or intercept your pin in several different ways.

Re:Positive pressure?

[ColaMan]

But you can get a long way with a stolen card and PayWave before someone notices, what with it's $100 limit per transaction and (usually) lengthy delays before said transactions appear on statements.

Re: Positive pressure?

[angel'o'sphere]

If they say 'gas' they likely mean 'gasoline'.
Just my thought.

Re:Positive pressure?

[The Grim Reefer]

No, but it doesn't have to. I simply needs to hold enough gas in the room. Do you think the walls and other plastic bits contain the explosion?

Re: Positive pressure?

[rickb928]

Around here it gets to 121â occasionally. An ATM in an enclosure doesn't have much of chance without active cooling.

If it has a sun exposure, expect internal temps of 160-180â. My car gets that hot.

Re: Positive pressure?

[DavidRawling]

No, they actually usually mean LPG. I think it's only the US that conflates these terms (IME most other countries call the liquid fuels for vehicles "petrol" and "diesel"). In a gas attack, the criminals generally bring along a compressed cylinder of LPG - open the valve and the pressure causes the flammable and explosive gas to be expelled, into the air vents of the ATM. Add sparks and boom.

Re:Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

And hence the proposed solution does work even less. You seem to have completely missed what I was talking about and that the UEL is completely irrelevant for my argument. "WTF" indeed.

But you know, UEL 100% nonsense. Wikipedia seems to have copied a rather obvious error. Looking it up, it turns out to be 80...82% and that explains why it is used in this fashion: It has an extremely wide working range as a fuel-air explosive.

I do stand corrected on the UEL though, even if that has zero impact on my point and your claim is just as wrong.

Re:Positive pressure?

[mjwx]

How about you don't seal the back of the ATM but instead put vents on it and a blower continuously pushing fresh air in? If they thieves try to pump it full of explosive gas, it would blow back out.

Because that costs more money.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Customers encounter broken arms from bombings when they need to access their money. Customers end up paying for it through interest rates and fees. It is not a victimless crime.

Re: Positive pressure?

[mjwx]

Around here, ATMs are freestanding outside under an overhang (typically for drivethrough) or are built into the side of a building (walk-up or drivethrough). It's exceedingly rare for an ATM to be indoors unless it's in a shopping center. It's hot here though, and it doesn't rain much and snows maybe once every 20 years, so there's little need to protect ATMs from the elements.

In cooler climates they need to keep them indoors. Keypads that ice over dont work very well.

However even in Australia where it never snows, there is a trend of putting them inside their own little lobbies for security. The first thing an ATM theif does is spray paint over the camera before backing their ute up and putting the ATM out of the wall. Putting them inside reduces the risk of this kind of theft (thieves will still ram raid) but also because you can put cameras behind the glass and out of reach, you have a better chance of identifying and apprehending the miscreants.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of that functionality requires a chip. I'm sure all of those security measures are the same for American ATM cards.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you looking at? That link doesn't go to Wikipedia. Maybe if you actually looked, it goes to Matheson Gas. In fact, Wiki says nothing about it on the acetylene page. Where are you getting your numbers?

Are you feeling okay there?

Re:Positive pressure?

[tehcyder]

And you think that has not been tried? You just insulted all the engineers working on ATMs as utterly stupid morons.

You must be new here.

Every slashdot story contains a few comments on the lines of "I may not be an expert in scientific/engineering discipline X, but as a computer science graduate, it seems obvious to me that you should just do Y and here's a link to a small PERL script to do exactly that."

Re:Positive pressure?

[tehcyder]

A perfect example of Poe's Law. Modded +5 funny, but just as likely to be serious.

Re:Positive pressure?

[Z00L00K]

Just glass capsules, the explosion breaks the capsules and drenches the money.

Re:Positive pressure?

[gweihir]

Your link is broken. But that does fit your general presentation.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gasoline in liquid form is not really explosive, so no soup for you!

Re:Positive pressure?

[RespekMyAthorati]

And how are they going to block the holes in the back?

Re: Positive pressure?

[RespekMyAthorati]

What are you talking about? The fan is on the inside of the building that the ATM is mounted on.
That way the fan actually improves the flow of cooled air into the machine.

Re:Positive pressure?

[RespekMyAthorati]

About $10 on a $2000- $5000 machine.

Re: Positive pressure?

[Agripa]

A vent pipe works by preventing a buildup of explosive gas. In this case they are displacing the air inside the strongbox with both fuel and oxidizer so unless the vent pipe is sufficient to relieve the pressure of the detonation, it will not help.

Re: Positive pressure?

[rickb928]

These ATMs are in steel or concrete booths. Without A/C they are ovens. Even when covered. Add the electronics and the heat up a lot.

If you don't live in Phoenix stop pretending you do. If you do, you should know better.

Re:Positive pressure?

[sir-gold]

Meanwhile in the US, they also removed the signature requirement (for small purchases), reducing mag stripe + signature down to just mag stripe.

So now, if you happen to find a debit card laying on the ground, you can spend all day (or however long it keeps working) buying gas and groceries at the self-serves.

The mythbusters need to test this now!

[Joe_Dragon]

The mythbusters need to test this now!

Jamie Wants a Big Boom.

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[redalien]

They won't until there's a TV show or movie to tie it in to.

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[MitchDev]

Or it will be like the "How easy is it to steal credit card numbers" segment that sponsors forced them to cut from the show...

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[NoMaster]

Why, when the funny version is available on YouTube?

A local one from the other week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVEkK_ZhKQo

The local intelligentsia have been doing this on and off since at least 2008:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/now-theyre-robbing-with-gas-atms-blown-up/2008/11/18/1226770451062.html

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[OzPeter]

The mythbusters need to test this now!

Jamie Wants a Big Boom.

(Heard off-camera after some tests had been performed to see how noteworthy an ATM segment would be)

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[NotDrWho]

They won't until there's a TV show or movie to tie it in to.

Yeah, sadly, that's pretty much all they do now. I'm pretty sure this was something the Discovery execs forced on them (along with shitcanning the junior mythbusters). Mythbusters is one of the few shows still left on that channel where hillbillies don't fake a bunch of drama while fishing, goldmining, or moonshining. Once Discovery finally strips it of everything that made it great and drives it off the air, the execs will have another free camera crew to send to Alaska with instructions to "try to make it look real" as they stage faux redneck drama.

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[Anonymous Coward]

FOUR explosive attacks on ATMs yesterday have prompted police to re-form Strike Force Piccadilly.

Ha, in the southern US, Piccadilly is the name of a chain of buffet restaurants. "Strike Force Piccadilly" sounds just like something the cops would set up to sit their fat ass at the buffet all day.

Re: The mythbusters need to test this now!

[Anonymous Coward]

The mythbusters need to go f themselves permanently. That show is for literal retards

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[Coren22]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnR3Tyrg_10

No boom today. Boom tomorrow.

Re:The mythbusters need to test this now!

[Cramer]

I think that's all about costs. Notice how everything is being done at M5 (and the completely over-the-top gratuitous shots of the M5 sign) now. The show used to have it's own shop.

For all of you USA haters out there:

[ColdWetDog]

Along with Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and not many other countries, the U.S. doesn't require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM.

"Can I make a suggestion that doesn't involve violence, or is this the wrong crowd for that?"

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bomb an ATM in America? One way ticket to Gitmo.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...]stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM."

Yeah, I guess in the USA, holding someone at gun- or knife-point and demanding their wallet counts as non-violent. Yes, the linked article was talking about mass use of fake cards, but there is no shortage of people getting robbed at ATMs as well.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[bogaboga]

Not requiring an "encryption chip" itself shouldn't be something we're proud of. It should be a fact that drives the point home that the USA is almost always a little behind other countries though you'd be hard pressed to find an ordinary American who believes we're indeed a little behind.

Riding the NY subway system just last week drove the point home when I witnessed rail cars those in South Africa may think are from the 50s, and wouldn't associate with a "first world" country.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[halivar]

It's the cost of being first adopters. It's easier to build modern infrastructure when you have no infrastructure to begin with. We've got legacy systems for everything: finance, IT, cable, phone, nuclear, etc., etc. The next people in line implement the next generation using lessons learned from the implementations before them.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[OzPeter]

Not requiring an "encryption chip" itself shouldn't be something we're proud of

The funny thing is that last year I my latest Amex card came with a chip, and so far the only place that I have actually used it is at Walmart of all places.

And when I did use it, the attendant came running over and tried to convince me that I needed to swipe the card rather than poke into the chip-reading hole - even though when I first swiped it, the POS terminal recognized that I had a chipped card and told me that I needed to poke the card into the chip-reading hole.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[beelsebob]

No, no it's not. Europe too had legacy finance systems. We overhauled them - making us first adopters. The difference is not that you were first adopters (you weren't), it's that we actually spent some money to improve things.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[bws111]

Uh, yeah. Of the 6400 cars in the NYC subway, more than 4300 were built in the last 15 years. Only 1400 are more than 30 years old, only 300 more than 40 years old, and none more than 50 years old.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Neil Boekend]

Here in the Netherlands a complete system for magstripe debit and credit card reading was in place. It worked for years.
However, with the upswing in magstripe data thefts the banks have switched to chip. Next step is to disable magstripe payments by default unless the customer requests it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[MightyYar]

Since the losses due to card fraud are almost entirely borne by the banks, I have to assume it is more cost effective to take the losses than to chip all of the cards.

I'm not sure what you mean regarding the NYC subway - those trains aren't very old. There are some older (1960s-era Budd cars) trains still used on the C line, but they were redone in the late 80s. The J and Z lines have some cars from the early 70s - but again, these were overhauled in the late 80s. Other than that, the oldest cars are from the late 70s - certainly nothing wooden from the 50s. The vast majority of the rolling stock was built by Bombardier, Kawasaki, or perhaps Westinghouse for some of the older 80s trains.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We also have a (general, not universal) willingness to let the market squabble it out for an extended period of time, rather than give a good hard shove in the direction of some implementation. This tendency may be abetted by the fact that early adoption creates incumbents who have a vested interest in stalling as long as possible to milk their legacy investments and first-mover advantage, as in our wonderful market for ISPs.

With the payment card industry, you have a lot of people(all clambering to grab as much of the cut for themselves as they can, and shove as much of the risk onto others as they can) with competing agendas and a desire to have their pet proprietary system gain a foothold so they can extract tolls with it(eg. the incidents where some retailers with functioning NFC POS systems were deliberately disabling them because Apple Pay was a competitor to their 'CurrenC' system, and the ongoing spat between Google and the carrier-backed payment scheme formerly known as ISIS before that became a toxic brand). Nobody actually believes that "USA IS #1!!! Mag stripes RULE!"; but between everyone wanting to control the customer data and processing fees and banks, merchants, and payment processors fighting over risk allocation, it's a bit of a clusterfuck.

Compare to say, the DoD's CAC rollout: CACs still aren't what you'd call a joy to configure(especially on OSX, or in Citrix environments, or other oddball use cases); but the DoD decided that it wanted everyone using smartcards for cryptographic authentication, said that that was how it was going to be, and it was so (relatively) quickly and smoothly.

Opinions vary on how often we dodge a bullet, or get the benefit of something new and innovative, thanks to there being no mandate in place vs. how often we suffer pointless bullshit for an agonizingly long period of time(eg. the less-than-totally-compatible US cellular market); but the fact that we tend not to mandate an end to such fights all that often, or all that quickly, is simply a fact. Even when we do mandate something, it's often a de-facto 'national' mandate created because California, or another large state, demands something and it's cheaper to sell California-spec everywhere than it is to have two SKUs.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[bsdasym]

Yes, yes it is something we should be proud of -- because those chips are pure security theater, protecting only against the (quite rare) 'skimming' devices. If you steal someones card, you get the chip with it. You don't get the PIN. In neither case can the card be used to withdraw money from an ATM. In both cases, the card can be used for online purchasing.

How the authors conclude that this has anything to do with ATM bombings is a complete mystery. What were they doing before the useless encryption chips? Stealing dozens of cards and beating the PINs out of the owners? How did these magical encryption chips put a stop to this practice?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[hattig]

It's the same in the UK, except chip and pin is the default and has been for around eight? ten? years already. I don't know if the magstripe is really used anymore either.

It's quaint seeing a foreigner (American) try to pay for goods with a card, and have to go through special procedures for the signature style payment.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

America! America! We're number .. umm... 34! But trust us, number 35 are a real bunch of bitches!!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[quenda]

Never mind the antiquated banking system, lack of metric or the crippling health-care system - explain why pennies are still in circulation in the US!
There is a fundamental conservatism in the US that makes it exceptionally difficult to change anything at the national level.
It is something of a paradox, since at the local level, Americans are so adaptable and innovative.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[itzly]

explain why pennies are still in circulation in the US!

And why haven't 1 and 2 dollar bills been replaced by coins years ago ?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the difference is that in EU the banks were legally liable for 'identity theft' so they made it harder. In the US, banks made merchants/card holders liable instead.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Mortimer82]

Since the losses due to card fraud are almost entirely borne by the banks, I have to assume it is more cost effective to take the losses than to chip all of the cards.

And do you suppose the bank's employees pay for the fraud out their own salaries? Of course not! The cost of fraud is paid by their honest customer's banking fees. Even if you as a customer get refunded by the bank, when a fraudulent transaction occurs on your account, the money has to come from somewhere.

Once one realizes this, then they realize that the banks have no incentive to pay for improved security, hence, the only reason that US banks haven't improved their security is because they would rather raise customer's bank fees instead of making the effort to try elliminate the problem.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[war4peace]

Who cares when were they built? If they're all built last year based on a design from the 50s, it's still the same crap, just shinier.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[johnw]

I am reminded of an article I read a few years ago about some anniversary of the invention of the ATM. The American credited with inventing it, explaining how he did it, said he'd seen one in London, and so came home and invented it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

because I don't want 2 pounds of change in my pocket.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Age of the actual cars doesn't mean the design of the cars has been updated.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[ultranova]

Bomb an ATM in America? One way ticket to Gitmo.

If you bomb an ATM, you go to prison, not Gitmo. Gitmo is for getting around that pesky Sixth Amendment thing, not for actual criminals.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[houghi]

Spending money is true, but is was a mere investment that has been profitable.
There are now several banks in Belgium that block your credit card (MC, Visa) for the USofA, because of the risk.

As the usage of cards in the US is much higher, the return on investment should be sooner in the US as well.

In Europe it is now the standard. Both debit and credit cards use it and I have seen some pre-paid cards that don't even have a metal strip anymore. Readers still have it as a backup, but cheaper ones without it are available.
In Belgium even the ID card has it (Open source) and can be used to sign digitally.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[evil crash]

Cuz it is not sexy when a stripper gets and eye taken out by a handful of dollar coins tossed at her.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[wonkey_monkey]

because those chips are pure security theater, protecting only against the (quite rare) 'skimming' devices

Chip and PIN also protects you against having your card stolen and used in store, because the only verification is the signature - which is conveniently already on the back of the card for the thief to copy (and usually checked by a singularly uninterested human).

Secondly, how rare is "quite rare"?

How the authors conclude that this has anything to do with ATM bombings is a complete mystery.

Yes, that bit confuses me as well. The link that the Slashdot editors have added goes to a story about card data being hacked to allow unlimited withdrawals, and the like - not nicking someone's card and taking out their money.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

They also protect against card cloning.

Also, they're used with stand alone card readers that generate a one time PIN for my online banking.
'Verified by Visa' payments also use this when I'm buying something online with a different shipping address, or when the value is outside my usual spending pattern.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[houghi]

I have to assume it is more cost effective to take the losses than to chip all of the cards.

No, it isn't. Especially not if you do it over a fase of say 5 years. That way the moment somebody needs a new card, either because the old one expired or it was lost or stolen.

The extra cost for the card is minimal as it is produced in such vast numbers. Sure, if you replace all cards before their end of life, then it becomes expensive.

The problem, I believe, is that investing money is almost seen as a loss for the company. In Europe and the rest of the world the same issues have arisen and the same questions have been asked by the same companies. And somehow they arrived at different answer?

Also the money that you looses is not all. You also need to spend time in the investigation. You get false positives and false negatives. It all becomes a LOT easier when you have a chip.

This does not mean abuse is not possible. People will lie that their card is stolen. Other ways of abuse will happen as well. These are on top of what already happens with the cards, not instead of.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[lister king of smeg]

The most you will carry unable to turn into a bill is 4 coins then not pounds.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather the banks assume responsibility and I pay a small sliver out of my banking fees, rather than have some system like Chip and Pin, which was designed to absolve banks of all liability, and risk being stuck holding the empty bag with absolutely no ability to get my money back.

It's similar to insurance. I'd rather pay for a tiny slice of resolving fraud rather than paying nothing but risking getting completely screwed by it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[MightyYar]

And somehow they arrived at different answer?

Sure, why not? As TFA illustrates, sometimes the losses that banks are incurring differs between the US and Europe. No one has (so far) started blowing up ATMs in the US, so why would the banks spend money making them explosion-resistant? Similarly, if the cards aren't being counterfeited at a rate deemed unacceptable by the banks, why should they upgrade all of their ATMs?

As an aside, the big American credit card companies (not the ATM cards) are switching to chip cards. After 2015, if you are a merchant and don't upgrade to a chip reader, you will have to accept responsibility for any fraud. The transition is estimated to cost around $8 billion, so there is pushback from the merchants and it will be interesting to watch it all play out.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK we actually have 1938 vintage rolling stock (not a 1938 design, actually built in 1938!) in regular service on the national rail network (not part of a heritage railway or heritage touring setup, which obviously involves much older stock, but just a normal daily service).

This rolling stock runs on 'Island line' on the Isle of Wight and consists of 1938 vintage ex london underground electric stock, re-purposed and refurbished for use on an overground railway.

There are no current plans to replace these vintage gems (the last upgrade was in 1992 when the 1923 vintage stock was replaced with the current 1938 stock).

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Chip and PIN only attempts to absolve banks of any liability and to leave the account holder empty handed.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[dave420]

Keep telling yourself that and see just how long your decrepit infrastructure lasts. Every single country has legacy systems, so clearly that is not an excuse. That only makes sense if you truly believe the US is some wonderland of technology the rest of the world has only recently adopted, which is such an absurd notion it defies belief someone can actually hold it in the 21st century, when information which dispels said notion in seconds is available at the click of a mouse button.

You're not special.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[MightyYar]

The cost of fraud is paid by their honest customer's banking fees. Even if you as a customer get refunded by the bank, when a fraudulent transaction occurs on your account, the money has to come from somewhere.

The cost of new ATM machines is paid by the honest customer's banking fees as well. That money also has to come from somewhere. Like most business decisions, it is a cost-benefit calculation.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[John.Banister]

I was wondering about a solution to this problem, and I find that prepaid travel EMV cards are available for purchase to those who think to do so in advance. Do you think tourists could also buy such cards after arrival?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[bulled]

I wish I had mod points for you, becuase this needs one.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Mortimer82]

I agree with you in principle that I would prefer a small amount of my fees act kind of act like "fraud insurance" so that I don't suffer the loss personally. But what would be nice if all organisations would make more of an effort to reduce fraud. But what happens instead is that when fraud is costing them too much, all they do is raise their customer's fees. I would really prefer not to be paying extra fees which do nothing more than go into the pockets of fraudsters.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[John.Banister]

Universal Anodic Protection. It's got copper on all sides, so you can easily solder it on, but the copper is thin enough to easily buff off the exposed side when you're done - Instant Zinc Anode. When the ocean levels rise from our CO2 emissions, we'll be ready.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[tlhIngan]

explain why pennies are still in circulation in the US!

Because there are actually people who live such lives that pennies matter in the US.

Getting rid of the penny is easy. Dealing with the social aftermath is not - try to explain to said poor folk that they're now paying up to 4 cents more for food (what, you think people always round properly? I've stopped dealing with many businesses who decide rounding UP always was going to be their business model) or other necessity. Or how it always seems that even if it rounds properly, the amount always seems to be against them (i.e., it always costs 1 or 2 cents more).

Yes, there are people who literally live and die by pennies every day. And no, they're too poor in the US to have much dealings with banking.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[ebh]

It wasn't quaint *being* that American, it was embarrassing.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[gtall]

Seeing as the Sixth Amendment only applies to American citizens, why would you assume it applies to foreigners?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[bws111]

Yeah, they're still using designs from the 50s. The cars are still made of wood and have ceiling fans (oops, they are stainless steel/fiberglass and have A/C).

The cars currently being made (R188) were designed in 2011. Previous generation (R160) was designed in 2005. Prior to that was the R143 (2010) and the R142 (1999).

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[NotDrWho]

Yeah, I guess in the USA, holding someone at gun- or knife-point and demanding their wallet counts as non-violent.

In Detroit, they call it "Thursday"

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on metro systems around the world, and the most modern one I've been on was in Athens. The only reason that metro system was heavily upgraded/modernized was because Athens hosted the 2004 summer Olympics. What are you expecting? a complete redesign every 10 years that introduces incompatibilities with existing trainsets just because it "Looks" Old? look at the Paris Metro system, it's a hodge-podge of different incompatible trainsets. some of which are antiquated in comparison to the New York subway system or BART.

So which one is better? The system that keeps moving.

Rome, Athens, and Paris..... They don't fuck around. Their trains are never stopped for more than 15 seconds. Get on, get off, doors shut, train is gone. When it comes to BART, they spend too much time at stations while the conductor is on the PA babysitting passengers about transfers, which train it is..... blah,blah,blah..... so you end up sitting at stations for 2+ minutes, instead of actually getting somewhere.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the history of the credit card on Wikipedia, each major innovation from 1900 through the development of widely accepted third party revolving credit account cards in the 1950s-1960s started in the United States.

We've had an enormous installed base for decades, and therefore a tremendous disincentive to change the system in a way that fundamentally invalidates the existing infrastructure. The influence of criminal activity is pushing the issue and making it, if not profitable, at least beneficial to finally make that shift.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are all kind of reasons for our being "behind." Let's start with the fact that the US is giant compared with the the nations that are always touting themselves as more developed. I also disagree that you'd be hard pressed to find an ordinary American who is unaware of it, given how often politicians seem to bring up the fact that we're falling behind on one thing or another. Say what you will about antiquated payment technology or less-than-perfect rolling stock, the United States has an amazing standard of living compared with rest of even the developed world (excepting certain European countries, and metropolitan areas). If you don't believe me, just look at the rankings on prosperity.com. It outdoes most of Western Europe in a lot of areas. There is no other country of this size that has ever come close to offering the standard of living to its entire population that the US (and Canada) does. Even the poorest American has it way better than most people on earth. Which isn't to say that there isn't room for improvement. What that should really make you wonder is just how bad things are for most of the world's population. Poor Americans aren't living the life, by and large. So just think how awful living in the developing world must be to make them long to live here.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How did you arrive at the conclusion that it doesn't apply to foreigners?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[itzly]

Since when do Americans care about the poor ?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is making it so if you take a magstrip swipe after a certain date, your business is the one that has to cover the fraudulent charges, not the credit card company. This is going to make people switch pretty damn fast.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[xaxa]

I was wondering about a solution to this problem, and I find that prepaid travel EMV cards are available for purchase to those who think to do so in advance. Do you think tourists could also buy such cards after arrival?

Yes, I've found these: http://www.idtprime.com/ http://www.splashplastic.com/ which are available in shops in the UK. (From http://www.mastercard.co.uk/fi... and I said I was 13 and didn't travel.) They can be topped up with cash. (Check thoroughly before relying on these, I don't know anyone with one!)

You could ask your American bank to send an EMV card. Non-EMV cards are often accepted in person for shopping, restaurants etc, but you can get stuck dealing with machines (e.g. buying train tickets, or collecting cinema tickets you've ordered online) or very cheap merchants (trader at a music festival, market stall holder etc).

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we would rather have an unending discussion about pennies
  than a progression of discussions on nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, etc.

Keeping the pennies around helps preserve the mystical value of money.

Of course, electronic transfers may make this cash stuff all moot.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[xaxa]

The funny thing is that last year I my latest Amex card came with a chip, and so far the only place that I have actually used it is at Walmart of all places.

It was similar in the UK, until the law changed to allow Visa and MasterCard to push the liability for non-chip fraud onto merchants. In the months leading up to that, everyone updated their card readers.

The law changes in the USA in October.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[jafiwam]

It's the cost of being first adopters. It's easier to build modern infrastructure when you have no infrastructure to begin with. We've got legacy systems for everything: finance, IT, cable, phone, nuclear, etc., etc. The next people in line implement the next generation using lessons learned from the implementations before them.

Likewise, it's easy for one industry in a country to be ahead of the same industry in the US.

Cell phone usage was faster in places that had NO PHONES before that. Beating out the US.

Tiny little compact places full of small people in tiny apartments got fiber optic sooner than the gigantic US with lots of space between places that would be hooked up, and competing options for TV and data.

Little twisty road countries with no hills and only 40 KM between major cities and their entire border have better ratios of people biking to work, beating out the gigantic and spread out not to mention hilly in many places US.

Finding one little piss ass country that has something better when one is cherry picking for something better is easy, unsurprising and boring. Find a country that has almost all of the stuff in the US has, and does _ALL_ of it better and I'll be impressed.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Eunuchswear]

Seeing as the Sixth Amendment only applies to American citizens, why would you assume it applies to foreigners?

Strange, nowhere in:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Do I see a mention of citizenship.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[dave420]

Aww! So cute! Size has nothing to do with it - Europe is larger than the US, contains more people, and contains many places with a far greater quality of life. Hint: money is no measure of quality of life. You'd know that if you read.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[xaxa]

I think some American trains just look old. Bare aluminium (sometimes fluted!) and boxy corners.

Compare the newest NYC train with the newest London Underground train: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

(London's oldest trains are from 1972, and will be replaced in 2025. The next oldest are from 1980, and will be replaced this year. How long trains last seems to depend more on how well they were built and maintained, rather than simply age.)

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[xaxa]

What were they doing before the useless encryption chips? Stealing dozens of cards and beating the PINs out of the owners? How did these magical encryption chips put a stop to this practice?

Cloning magstripe cards to use in ATMs. The chips can't be cloned.

“Fraud on lost and stolen cards is now at its lowest level for two decades and counterfeit card fraud losses have also fallen and are at their lowest level since 1999. Losses at U.K. retailers have fallen by 67 per cent since 2004; lost and stolen card fraud fell by 58 per cent between 2004 and 2009; and mail non-receipt fraud has fallen by 91 per cent since 2004.”

Similarly, the national roll-out of EMV in Canada in 2008 had a dramatic impact on fraud. Losses from card skimming in Canada fell from CAD$142 million in 2009 to CAD$38.5 million in 2012, according to the Interac Association.

http://www.smartcardalliance.o...

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget electricity. There is a reason why the US isn't "doing it right" with 240 volt mains at 50 hertz. It was because the US was the first country to have electricity on a large scale, and it is lot harder to rewire an entire grid than to start from scratch knowing mistakes made in the past.

The problem is that the US did a lot of things the first. We all know how version 1.0 stuff is, and the bugs involved. So, the rest of the world could get a leg up and start their infrastructure out at version 2.0 or version 3.0.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[HornWumpus]

I've been 'asked to leave' a club after dropping two dollars worth of ice cold quarters down a dancers g string.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[HornWumpus]

We don't, but some lie to grab power.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[HornWumpus]

People voting with their feet say you are wrong. Until net immigration changes flow you are just blowing smoke.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you don't have the AnsaldoBreda cars like the Los Angeles rail system has. Those are the biggest pieces of shit I've ever ridden in. They replaced the very comfortable and well-designed Siemens cars.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[T.E.D.]

I can somewhat vouch for this. I went to Holland on a spur of the moment business trip last summer. While pretty much everyone there takes credit cards, they all have to be chipped. Of course with 1 day notice for the trip, I didn't have time to acquire such a card. My only salvation was that some of the currency-exchanging bank ATMs (particularly in the train stations) would take my magstripe Visa bank debit card.

As an aside, I was also pretty startled by the amount of English knowledge there. I think I was hampered by knowing only English in exactly 2 places the whole month. I even had a train station panhandler switch right to English when I tried to fob him off because I didn't understand his pitch. I was tempted to say "No Habla Englez", but he probably knew Spanish too. :-(

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, if a credit card drops out of a wallet, a thief can go swipe it in any gas station's register, guess a ZIP code (hint, they are big, so not too many possibilities), and fill up. From there, the thief can go visit a store or two, and if done right, can get away with a good amount before the bank's anti-fraud mechanism trips and the card starts getting declined.

With chip-and PIN, the thief can't do much with the card. They can't just scribble the numbers from it and make charges via a mail order company, nor can get free fuel.

Even mail order transactions are protected, because what comes with chip and PIN is a secondary PIN/password that is required by the CC processor to run the transaction. No password, no goodies.

As for skimming devices being quite rare, a friend of mine yanked one that was attached to a gas pump last week.

Don't forget the businesses that have databases of credit card numbers. I had one of my cards closed because a sub sandwich place I patronized got hacked and I started having multiple C-note transactions attempted to be charged from South Korea. I'm glad my bank caught those and stopped it cold, but few businesses in the US actually have -any- protection on their credit card stuff, much less go through the bother of tokenization... so with chip and PIN, a database full of credit card numbers would mean nothing of value can be gained from it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[T.E.D.]

They are only mostly in circulation. Pretty much all retailers have some place at checkout to stick your unwanted pennies, and most people won't even bother to bend over to pick one up off the ground any more. Some people have been known to throw them in the nearest trash can. I tend to solve the problem by using my bank card for all purchases.

I think the basic problem is that getting rid of them would require an act of Congress. That's a place filled with old guys who fondly remember using pennies to pay for bottled cokes back in the '50's.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[MightyYar]

Yeah, they definitely aren't sleek looking. In general, they are stainless steel for ease of maintenance, and boxy because they don't go very fast.

It's worth noting that the "newest" NYC trains are actually a design from the late 90s. This generation is pretty much done and there is a new design being worked on now. In contrast, the London train you linked to first debuted in 2010 (according to Wikipedia). I suspect the 2016-designed NYC trains will appear more up-to-date. Or not... :)

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

There is ALWAYS problem with going to a country with less advanced and working payment systems and bank availability, might work well for those in the country, but problem for visitors. Same probably apply for my country Sweden, but all the foreigners i've talked too havnt had a problem unless they try to use a for sweden uncommon card service or an older card type.

Chip and pin has been the default in my country Sweden too for a long time, but what its really annoying when i travel in UK (and a lot of other european countries, but will use UK here) is that it is really annoying that the common Visa or Mastercard issued by big Swedish banks often cant be used to withdraw money from, only UK versions of those cards or UK bank cards work (unless you visit banks, and sometimes even a bank wont work). Add it to the fact that a lot of places or turist spots dont accept card payments or foreign debit cards at all and it gets really annoying for a visitor who are used to cards working everywhere in its homecountry, including small shops/places "in the middle of nowhere".

Thats why I always have a lot of cash with me and see the ability for card payment when it works as a bonus when fueling the car, buying tickets, food and more. But you cant depend on cards working, and without plenty of cash you will be having problems visiting places, eating out and so on. You go thru cash like crazy compared to Sweden.

Sweden is moving more and more towards a cashless economy, which has its downsides as well as upsides were all well aware of. But the cost of operating a card machine have to be great, the banking system having problems (or the abillity to hide cash from goverment taxing really important) for businesses to not have the option for a visitor.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, you do realize that Europe didn't do that all at once, right? I'm pretty sure most of these things were done country by country until they had reached critical mass.

Yes, the US is being somewhat sluggish about it, but we are one of the largest countries in the world both by land mass and population. Nothing we do that covers the whole country is ever going to be as simple as doing it state by state. That's one of the reasons why so many of these big changes end up being done state by state.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[xaxa]

The whole lot is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

The next fleet of trains will cost £16 billion, the lines the trains are for have an annual ridership of about 600 million, and we could assume the trains will last 55 years (same as the ones they're replacing). That's 16G/600M/55 = 48 pence per journey?

I wonder if a boring design would cost less. I suspect it doesn't make much difference in the end -- a custom design is needed to maximise capacity in the old tunnels in any case.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

We could do it, there's just no demand for that. Most houses already have 230v equipment on site, it's just reserved for things like driers and dishwashers in most cases. There's nothing stopping people from using that all over their house. Plus, damn near everything I own that plugs into the wall is happy enough to use the voltage without anything other than a plug adapter.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[bsdasym]

because those chips are pure security theater, protecting only against the (quite rare) 'skimming' devices

Chip and PIN also protects you against having your card stolen and used in store, because the only verification is the signature - which is conveniently already on the back of the card for the thief to copy (and usually checked by a singularly uninterested human).

Secondly, how rare is "quite rare"?

Can you explain in detail how the CHIP part of that provides even one tiny fraction of added security, in that situation? It doesn't. It prevents cards from being copied, it provides no additional protection for POS or online purchases. The stolen card still has the (intact, valid) chip on it.

The prevalence of skimming devices is tough to get an exact handle on, but it was big news a few years ago when the FBI found a large number of them installed in SoCal and began making arrests. The "large number" resulted in roughly $50,000 in fraud spread over 50 victims. You've got a greater chance of getting hit by lightning than being a victim of a card skimmer.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sixth Amendment is for people who commit crimes, not acts of war. Citizens in insurrection during the American Civil War were not tried in criminal court nor was the Sixth Amendment deemed to apply. Neither were POWs captured in WWII. Like all parts of the Constitution it also only applies on U.S soil.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

They care enough to make sure they stay that way. They built an entire criminal 'justice' system to do it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[towermac]

60 hertz. not 50.

What's wrong with our electricity btw?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Pennies are still used because local tax authorities often impose taxes in uneven penny lots, because they are imposed in percentages and Americans are canny enough to know if tax is 13 cents and we let them get rid of pennies it jumps to 15 cents and then taxes jump in 5 cent increments.
Americans don't want dollar coins. They have been tried many times over the last decades. To Americans they represent a loss in buying power. A wad of 1 dollar bills is still a wad. A pocket full of 1 dollar coins is a pocket full of change.
For the recent decade the government has tried to hide the decreasing worth of the dollar, clearly seen by anyone who has ever figured out real cost using historic dollars. If they go to dollar coins they admit what was worth a dollar in 1985 is only worth 150 cents today.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[StikyPad]

Yeah, just like the subway, the railroad, the ATM, the vacuum tube, the computer, the car phone, the television camera, the CRT, and the gas/street light.

Too bad Europe is lagging in all of those things due to their entrenched legacy systems.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[StikyPad]

Since they make us rich!

It's the truly destitute we don't care about.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[MightyYar]

I like trains and try to keep up with stuff, but there are guys who spend all day on forums arguing about stuff like the look of the front of the train. NYC used to have styled, raked ends - but this limited the flexibility of the trains to be added or removed from sets. When they are all squared-off, it is trivial to link them together. In any event, IIRC the London and NYC trains are all built by the same two manufacturers - Bombardier and Kawasaki. The styling mostly differs in materials used (aluminum vs. stainless) and the look of the fiberglass end caps.

Far more distressing than the look - to me - is the lack of automation. NYC is just now starting to add updated signalling. They still manually close the doors with a conductor!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[StikyPad]

Since the losses due to card fraud are almost entirely borne by the banks, I have to assume it is more cost effective to take the losses than to chip all of the cards.

No sir! In the US, fraud is borne by the merchant. http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog...

You are correct that it's more economical for the banks to incur 0 cost than a non-zero cost, however.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Andy Dodd]

During a vacation in early September, my parents had to switch credit cards at a Walmart.

The terminal (correctly) recognized it was a contact-chip enabled card, and refused the mag-swipe.

But the terminal's contact-based reader was nonfunctional!

Don't forget the whole CurrentC clusterfuck. CurrentC is going to get a brutal kick in the nuts in October when the EMV liability shift occurs - the backers of CurrentC will be faced with 3 options:
1) Accept contactless EMV payments (Including Apple Pay and Google Wallet, but not limited to them. I'm not sure if it's possible to block Apple Pay/GWallet without blocking all contactless EMV - no one has done it so far.)
2) Accept the shift of liability for fraud from the CC company to them (very unlikely)
3) Stop accepting credit cards completely (not gonna happen)

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[StikyPad]

Yeah, I guess in the USA, holding someone at gun- or knife-point and demanding their wallet counts as non-violent.

In Detroit, they call it "Thursday"

Don't be ridiculous.

They can't afford wallets in Detroit.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Andy Dodd]

Actually the banks have been pushing for a transition to EMV, but merchants are resisting it right and left for various reasons.

Watch all the merchants change their tune in October when all of the banks institute a liability shift to the merchant for non-EMV transactions (magstripe).

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[nmr_andrew]

The Constitution mentions citizenship in a very few places, for example as a prerequisite to run for President. There's not such limit on the Bill of Rights, or most other parts of the document for that matter.

That doesn't stop a certain portion of people from deciding that these protections don't apply to non-citizens, and this sadly includes some judges. I'm not sure where they think that leaves anyone with a green card or a visa.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[jwdb]

The Sixth Amendment is for people who commit crimes, not acts of war. Citizens in insurrection during the American Civil War were not tried in criminal court nor was the Sixth Amendment deemed to apply.

If this is a war, where's the official declaration?

Like all parts of the Constitution it also only applies on U.S soil.

Hah! Try telling that to the IRS, as I'd love that they stop taxing me when I'm not in the country. Hell, you've got people renouncing their citizenship over this issue.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they're still using designs from the 50s. The cars are still made of wood and have ceiling fans (oops, they are stainless steel/fiberglass and have A/C).

The cars currently being made (R188) were designed in 2011. Previous generation (R160) was designed in 2005. Prior to that was the R143 (2010) and the R142 (1999).

WTF. You still had wooden parts in the 50s? Not to mention that some 'new' designs keep to much of the old stuff they should have shed off and introduce new stuff that has no additional value.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[GrumpySteen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

The first ATM in the US was installed in 1960. The first ATM in the UK was installed in 1967.

In other words, you're full of shit.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's one thing I've learned growing up:

It's often better to make a good choice sooner than it is to make a perfect choice later. It can be quite easy to underestimate the the power of having a clear, concise direction early in a project.

As humans, we're remarkably good at working with quick and half-assed solutions and fixing problems later. See: The Internet.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[firewrought]

And do you suppose the bank's employees pay for the fraud out their own salaries? Of course not! The cost of fraud is paid by their honest customer's banking fees

The cost is paid for by some combination of shareholders, employees, customers, and insurers. You can't really say what that combination is. If you magically eliminated all ATM thefts/fraud, most of that benefit would go to either shareholders or top-level management. However, if the labor market were tight, that benefit might go to higher salaries for ordinary employees. Then again, if competition is fierce, the savings might be used to lower fees or pay higher dividends on interest-bearing accounts. Perhaps something more complex would happen, like hiring additional programmers so more work process could be automated, thereby resulting in layoffs for other personnel. All of these outcomes have more complicated second level effects, since they would ripple through the economy at large.

What you can say is that we as society pay at large, since the damage to the machine/building is a net loss for humanity, and the effort of participants (police, bank personnel, ATM designers, and even the burglars themselves) could have been better spent on their next best opportunity cost. (The one exception might be if these were subsistence burglars, in which case the overall cost to humanity can be harder to calculate.)

Re: For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK invented the ATM and has had underground rail since the 19th century.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[gweihir]

Indeed. In particular the whole US banking system is from the dark ages. In Europe, I have not used any any checks for two decades now and nobody does. Interbank-transfers are so cheap you do not even get billed for them anymore and all regular payments are electronic. The US is at least 2 decades behind in that area.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[gweihir]

That assumes the US was first in these areas. It was not. It is just behind and has been for a long, long time. Why do you think the US government spends so much effort into drumming it into every US citizens head that the US is "world leader" and "best country", etc.? Because if the majority of the US population would realize how badly behind the US is, there would be civil war.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[gweihir]

It seems you cannot even read the articles you quote: "In simultaneous and independent efforts, engineers in Japan, Sweden, and Britain developed their own cash machines during the early 1960s." and "An experimental Bankograph was installed in New York City in 1961 by the City Bank of New York, but removed after six months due to the lack of customer acceptance.".

So not only was that 1961 in the US, it was a failure as well.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we elect our elderly to high office instead of euthanizing them.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

... willingness to let the market squabble ...

Strange, in my country, the first vendor to offer chip-on-a-card security was American express. It took about 8 years for it to become standard with other card vendors (VISA, MasterCard, ATM).

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

... two dollars ...

I remember you: Last month you wanted change from change from a 1 dollar tip.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[FunkSoulBrother]

Tiny little compact places full of small people in tiny apartments got fiber optic sooner than the gigantic US with lots of space between places that would be hooked up, and competing options for TV and data.

But somehow they were still behind in Manhattan

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, someone ought to cover up this hole in the middle of the field where the goalpost used to be!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Your.Master]

How many $1 bills do you carry in your pocket???

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that all of those machines required a teller to be in the loop (and print a special one time use encoded paper). The US was in fact to have the first FULLY AUTOMATED machine.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[MightyYar]

We are talking ATM cards, are we not?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[whathappenedtomonday]

let the market squabble it out for an extended period of time

Thing is, the definition of 'market' has changed considerably since the time I was taught what a market is ("The market is the place where supply and demand meet"). Go check for yourself and apply the 'old' definition to whatever markets you are most familiar with, and you'll probably find they rarely work that way anymore, and many don't mess much with supply and demand, but are -- as you state -- playing for time.

Curiously enough, the page's fortune tells me: "'Free markets select for winning solutions.' -- Eric S. Raymond" They certainly used to, but do they still -- or rather: how free are they?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[GrumpySteen]

Commercial success is not a factor in determining whether someone invented a device. The person I responded to is still full of shit.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

My mains is 50Hz, as measured by the oscilloscope. I live in Mass.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Mashiki]

If this is a war, where's the official declaration?

Look at the other side, they've already declared it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Some are forgetting that we also have a larger country, more people and more infrastructure, more software and hardware in production, etc. That makes it harder to change overnight, people. It's called inertia. Having said that, I've been ready to go metric since high school, which was a long time ago...

Re: For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb fuck you are.

Re: For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Spur of the moment business trip" is something a drug dealer would say.

Re: For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody please think of the pizza guy! And strippers!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[flink]

I think the basic problem is that getting rid of them would require an act of Congress. That's a place filled with old guys who fondly remember using pennies to pay for bottled cokes back in the '50's.

Hey, as recently as the 80's when I was a kid, you could still buy penny candy in the literal sense (e.g. $0.01 = 1 Swedish Fish). I don't know if that's true anywhere anymore though.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess it is the 110volts ...

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really quaint is when your chip and pin system is inevitably compromised (it has been for years), the bank will hold the customer responsible, as they believe their system to be infallible.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That doesn't stop a certain portion of people from deciding that these protections don't apply to non-citizens, and this sadly includes some judges. I'm not sure where they think that leaves anyone with a green card or a visa.

Didn't the US sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights? Which states in article 14 some interesting things those judges might want to read up on.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[quenda]

try to explain to said poor folk that they're now paying up to 4 cents more for food

We could avoid most of these stupid arguments by a quick look at how other countries have implemented it.
Prices do not need to change, only cash transactions. The total price of your shopping basket will be rounded up or down by 2c at most. (This is legislated to minimise confusion.)

    And since when has the gov't felt the need to explain policy to dumb people?

the amount always seems to be against them (i.e., it always costs 1 or 2 cents more).

Tell 'em to always fill their gas tank with a extra 2c of "free" petrol :-)

The conspiracy nutter in me wonders if this (and the lack of $1 and $5 coins) is part of a policy to discourage use of cash in favour of more trackable transactions.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[gweihir]

Yea, like the US had the first _electronic_ computer. This is just some verbal trickery to obscure the fact that the US is not a technology-leader at all...

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[mjwx]

explain why pennies are still in circulation in the US!

And why haven't 1 and 2 dollar bills been replaced by coins years ago ?

When you go to the US you realise they use $1 notes a lot. I mean a lot. The two notes you'll use almost exclusively are $1's and $20's. Which is a good thing as any Australian, English or European will find astounding as soon as they get to the US is that all the notes are exactly the same size and colour.

When I was in the US, I got into the habit of carrying around a wad of singles, around $20 worth as you'd use them almost everywhere. If I had to carry around 20 $1 Australian coins at 9 grams a coin, my wallet would be dragging my pants around my ankles.

A better question is, why haven't they introduced a $0.50 coin, having to put in 10 quarters into a parking meter is silly, as is carrying around a crapton of quarters.

Also whilst we're on the subject of coins, why is a dime (10 cents) smaller and lighter than a nickel (5 cents)

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Neil Boekend]

Traditionally we are a trading nation. Nobody, except for us and the Flemmish, speaks Dutch. We have long since learned that this means learning other languages.
You can't sell stuff as easy if the other guy doesn't understand why he should buy it.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[wonkey_monkey]

Yes, the PIN part alone would be sufficient to protect against signature fraud.

As for skimming, you might be right about lightning, but that doesn't mean it's automatically nothing worth fixing. I found the following, although it's possibly a couple of years old:

ATM skimming costs U.S. banks almost $1 billion annually.
Cases reported to the Secret Service has grown 10% for the past 3 years.
Total annual loss of ATM and credit card skimming is $8 billion.

Remembering one news report certainly isn't any way to get a handle on the figures. In 2010 there was a case involving $1.8m taken from 1400 victims thanks to skimming. Anecdote Top Trumps!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[johnw]

Did you actually read the article which you cite? It exactly contradicts your claims.

In other words, you're full of shit.

Such a devastating riposte, worthy of Oscar Wilde at his best.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[dave420]

It doesn't have to be done over the entire country at once - a card can have a mag stripe and a chip at the same time. So why haven't the changes been made state-by-state? Your excuses are incredibly weak.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Anonymous Coward]

Often both are read. The chip does the authentication, but the magstripe is used as additional validation This defends against card proxying attacks.

Suppose you are paying in my store. You insert the card into my fake terminal. Somewhere else, someone is paying with a fake card. All commands from the ATM are transmitted over the internet to the fake terminal, your card responds and the ATM authorizes payment.

Reading the stripe as well on ATMs makes this more difficult. Shop payment machines usually don't (since you put the card in a slot instead of it going into the machine), but it is harder to buy for 2000Ã of stuff to resell than just get 2000Ã in cash.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[dave420]

That is an incredible display of clutching at straws! Good work!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[John.Banister]

Thanks very much for the information.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[delt0r]

Our strippers are higher quality and deserve $5 and $10s.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[fuzzywig]

It's not just about skimming, a card with just a mag-stripe is very easy to clone (you can do it with a strip of video tape). So when credit card details are stolen anywhere in the world, they're sent to the US to be turned into cloned cards so the money can be extracted, and then laundered and sent back to the country of origin.

My card provider blocks all US transactions unless I ring them up and tell them I'm going on holiday to America.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Optic7]

The cards that American banks are switching to are chip-based (and EMV-compatible) because of new regulations, however, the vast majority of them are going to be chip-and-signature, not chip-and-pin like in Europe. This unfortunately will still lead to inability to pay at automated machines with no attendants.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[Optic7]

The cards that American banks are switching to are chip-based (and EMV-compatible) because of new regulations, however, the vast, vast majority of them are going to be chip-and-signature, not chip-and-pin like in Europe. This unfortunately means that the special signature procedures for Americans will continue to hold you up in line, for the foreseeable future.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[smithmc]

Who cares what they look like? As long as the HVAC works and they roll down the track, aren't they doing their job?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[xaxa]

Interesting, America being different again ;-)

I found http://krebsonsecurity.com/201... which has some background. I'm not so sure about the security risk, there has been a recent slight increase in lost+stolen fraud in the UK (PDF graph, starting at £120M pre-introduction it reduced to £50M, but has since increased to £60M. (In step with other types too, so maybe it's just more crime in general.) That contradicts the person quoted though.

The other suggestion -- that people will pick the 'easiest' card in a competitive market -- sounds much more likely, especially as it's the reward cards that do use a PIN.

Not having a retailer take a card to check a signature helps -- they can't copy down the details to use online. In restaurants they must bring the machine to you, so you can type a PIN, and the card never leaves your sight (or often possession).

Re: For all of you USA haters out there:

[Meski]

An Oscar Wilde riposte - you'd likely only realise a week later that you'd been insulted

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[sir-gold]

A lot of the updates in Europe were caused by government regulations. Especially with credit cards.

Europe isn't as anti-regulation as the US is. Powerful people everywhere fight these regulations because the regulations will will cost them money, but in the US, they have a strong backing from people who are just opposed to government regulation in general (Tea-party, libertarians, lees-moderate republicans).

Slow internet, high healthcare costs, and insecure credit cards are the price the US pays for being a country founded on the idea of throwing off the yoke of government.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[war4peace]

Caves do a good job protecting people from rain, I wonder why did we ever move to huts and apartments and whatnot. Crazy!

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[hattig]

Yes, this is totally a problem. Also people writing their pin on their card...

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[asdfj]

Remember that the USA is as geographically large and culturally diverse as all of Europe. In our local microcosms the zeitgeist may be homogenous enough to quickly legislate something with uniform popularity, but at the national scale there's almost always some diametrically opposed entity who will fight you tooth and nail on what all your family and friends agreed is a good idea. Managing the world's most influential/powerful empire with one federal government ain't easy, yo.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[quenda]

Remember that the USA is as ... culturally diverse as all of Europe.

:-) You decided this after vacationing at Euro-Disney?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[asdfj]

Actually I've been all over Europe literally several dozen times (maybe close to 100 now, lost count decades ago), for both business and pleasure, and I've found that a given non-urban area in Europe tends to be much more homogenous than a given non-urban area in America. You Euros love your xenophobia and tie your concept of national identity very tightly to lineage/ethnicity, whereas even the most isolated backwards hick town in the deep south or midwest will have a smattering of hispanics/asians/indians.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[quenda]

a given non-urban area in Europe tends to be much more homogenous than a given non-urban area in America.

Sure. But that is very different from diversity within a continent. You might even say it is the antithesis. Mix all the people up, and you get bland uniformity. (Not entirely a bad thing, see Yugoslavia.)

even the most isolated backwards hick town in the deep south or midwest will have a smattering of hispanics/asians/indians.

So they are not isolated. What you describe is homogenisation; a loss of cultural diversity. Every town is becoming the same.

You Euros ...

Me? Bad assumption there.

You seem to be confusing local racial mix (the US political euphemistic sense) with continent wide diversity. If every town has a mix of all the people, that means all towns are the same. It is the polar opposite of diversity - bland uniformity.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[asdfj]

From your first comment's tone I assumed you were European. Whatever, that's irrelevant anyway.

It seems like you're not talking about ethnic diversity, but you're assuming that if a bunch of ethnicities live in the same region that makes it culturally homogenous? I strongly disagree with that assumption, based on my experiences living in Northeastern cities/suburbs where ethnic enclaves retain their insularity as a point of pride/identity. This is in contrast to European towns where I've noticed that the national identity tends to override ethnic identity/culture. Basically, I disagree very strongly that America is culturally homogenous (either on national/local scale), especially when compared to any sample from Europe. Another supporting fact for that is how even though Europeans consider their cultures/ethnicities different from one another, America draws more from the rest of the world (Asia/Latin America) which is undoubtedly more "different" than any intra-European cultural comparison.

I'm getting the feeling that you haven't traveled very much...

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[smithmc]

Because they do a better job, they are more functional. Plus there are only so many caves to go around. So, what was your point again?

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[war4peace]

Less noise, more comfort, etc. Those are functional improvements too.

Re:For all of you USA haters out there:

[quenda]

Again, I was responding to "USA is as culturally diverse as all of Europe.".

I think you vastly underestimated the importance of institutions and how Americanised immigrants have become (aside from Hispanics). You are comparing a zoo to the actual jungle.

Plus, I forget that "diversity" has become a politicised buzzword in the US, and that is the sense you were using? Sure the US has Polish people, and Polish community centres. But they are still integrated in US culture and institutions. They go to schools and workplaces which are thoroughly American.

Compare Norway to Albania - you will not find any two states in the US with the tiniest fraction of that difference.

Amateurs...

[Flyingfenix]

Here in Brazil, more than a few thousand ATMs were exploded in the last years. Using ordinary explosives, and in many cases, demolishing the entire building in the process.

Many times, it destroys the money completely in the process, but as it seems, usually enough remains that the practice continues. No need to be refined, using gas or thinking about the physics. The thieves sometimes hijack trucks and buses to close off the streets for a few minutes while others set up and detonate the ATMs. The police rarely has time to come to the scene and jail them. Also, sometimes, the police itself is involved.

The most effective measure taken to discourage the practice was to pack bags of dyes inside the ATM cassetes, so that the money is stained and rendered unusable. If you try to deposit stained money, it'll be confiscated on the spot.

In the last months, security measures got better in the larger cities, and the thieves moved to exploding the ATMs in smaller cities, or more remote locations in the suburbs.

Re:Amateurs...

[bickerdyke]

Many times, it destroys the money completely in the process, but as it seems, usually enough remains that the practice continues.

Well, it's not their money they're destroying...

The most effective measure taken to discourage the practice was to pack bags of dyes inside the ATM cassetes, so that the money is stained and rendered unusable. If you try to deposit stained money, it'll be confiscated on the spot.

Hmm... they can take the stained money, but neither deposit or spend it.....

They're probably going to leave behind stained money, as it is of no use to them. The bank, on the other hand, of course will re-deposit their own stained money....

But what if they would find out that there is MORE stained money found in the debris than there was inside?

Sounds to me like either a source for lulz or a way to wash (somehow literally) dirty money. (with a little inside help of course)

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Brazil
>close off the streets
why am I not surprised? and were police were mysteriously busy responding to another call far away?
is it as bad as mexico yet?

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

The most effective measure taken to discourage the practice was to pack bags of dyes inside the ATM cassetes, so that the money is stained and rendered unusable. If you try to deposit stained money, it'll be confiscated on the spot.

Hmm... they can take the stained money, but neither deposit or spend it.....

Here in DC we have at least 535 folks that are willing to take tainted cash. Any denomination, any amount.

Re:Amateurs...

[cdrudge]

They're probably going to leave behind stained money, as it is of no use to them. The bank, on the other hand, of course will re-deposit their own stained money....

No, they'll do the same thing that banks in the US do when they have a dye pack that goes off. They ship it back to the fed reserve and it gets replaced.

But what if they would find out that there is MORE stained money found in the debris than there was inside?

In what way would that benefit a thief to leave money, stained or not, at a crime scene?

Sounds to me like either a source for lulz or a way to wash (somehow literally) dirty money. (with a little inside help of course)

Nevermind. I didn't realize you were the actors in Office Space that had to look up the dictionary definition of money laundering.

Money laundering only works if you get the "clean" money back after it's been "laundered". If you have a guy on the inside that would get the money after it's been replaced, whether it's extra or not, it's not money laundering. It's just plain theft. And you wouldn't even need to go through hassle of laundering it, they would just steal it to begin with.

Re:Amateurs...

[bickerdyke]

But what if they would find out that there is MORE stained money found in the debris than there was inside?

In what way would that benefit a thief to leave money, stained or not, at a crime scene?

I left open the option "just for lulz". Yes, not everyone personally benefits from causing confusion.

Sounds to me like either a source for lulz or a way to wash (somehow literally) dirty money. (with a little inside help of course)

Nevermind. I didn't realize you were the actors in Office Space that had to look up the dictionary definition of money laundering.

Money laundering only works if you get the "clean" money back after it's been "laundered". If you have a guy on the inside that would get the money after it's been replaced, whether it's extra or not, it's not money laundering. It's just plain theft. And you wouldn't even need to go through hassle of laundering it, they would just steal it to begin with.

I even wrote "literally" laundring it - like removing stains.

And there is a huge difference if your inside man is replacing extra money: it won't be missed, lowering the risk of detection.

Sorry I'm not comming up with laid out plans for the perfect crime as a response to a /.-post, but I guess getting finding a way to have someone trusted (like another bank) replacing your stained bills would be the way to go if you were in that line of business.

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the part of the US where I live (midwestern city), the ATM's aren't usually in the bank lobby. They're usually standing on a drive-thru island, either at the far end of the drive-thru teller canopy or some other place 50 feet (or more) from the bank building.

A few years back, it was pretty common for these to be stolen in the middle of the night by chaining it to a large pickup truck's tow-hitch and driving away. They started adding dye packs to the ATM's and caught a bunch of the morons doing that.

Now it's just more common that they back a stolen truck through a storefront, then leave in their own getaway car (or a different stolen car). Jewelry stores are hit often, but oddly enough, so are places that sell hair extensions. Apparently hair extensions are worth big money on the black market.

Re:Amateurs...

[TheDarkMaster]

You forgot to mention that they are always in groups and using assault rifles. They are doing it so often in my city that soon we will have no usable ATM anymore, maybe not even banks given the lack of concern of them to leave the building intact.

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't that be 537?

Re:Amateurs...

[TheDarkMaster]

Is now.

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the other two only deal in "change".

Re:Amateurs...

[TheDarkMaster]

In the second that a "poor" bandit get caught by this system, human rights guys would fly in the ATM manufacturer's neck. And note that when the deceased is an ordinary citizen like you or me, you do not find the human rights guys anywhere.

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Safes (and this is a form of safe) used to be built with all sorts of nasty traps, including explosives and poison gas, to deter potential thieves.This is no longer legal as far as I'm aware, because it constitutes a booby trap which is unable to distinguish between lawful (say, a locksmith fixing a broken safe for the bank) and unlawful intruders (thieves).

Re:Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

In USA, quite literally lunatic trigger happy cops come swarming on scene within less than five minutes with guns drawn and pointed at your head. America has a big historical thing with bank robbers.
No. If you want cash from an ATM in the USA, what you do is get a big ol Ford 350 4x4 diesel truck with a pair of self expanding steel harpoons attached to the back on some lift hydraulics. Then just ram ol Bessie backwards into the ATM, floor the pedal and drop er in first. If she pulls out, lift her up a couple feet, and dash off to a safe lot a half mile away to flip her into the bed and tarp her up for the easy ride home. If she don't pull, disconnect and beat it the fuck outta there.

Re:Amateurs...

[grep -v '.*' *]

DC: Any denomination, any amount.

I'm HIGHLY offended by this remark. I'll have you know that my representative only takes the largest, highest quality amounts.

Maybe yours can be bought for a pittance, but mine is thinking ahead for inflation!

If this information is widely disseminated

[rmdingler]

(beyond the halls of this honorable posting forum), you can bet your bottom someone will be doing it by the end of the week.

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[Neil Boekend]

Hardly. It's easier to install a wireless magstripe reader over the card insertion slot so each card that goes through gets its data stolen.
We, in the Netherlands, only had an upswing after pinning from suspicious countries was blocked by default (a phone call sufficed to unblock it). I believer the main culprit was an eastern European country, but I can't remember which one.

It's only when you block the easy methods that explosions are used.

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[rmdingler]

Outside the realm of computer savvy individuals like those who frequent /., the method you describe is simply beyond the capabilities of many who steal for a living.

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[wonkey_monkey]

you can bet your bottom someone will be doing it by the end of the week.

Not sure whether you a word or not...

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[war4peace]

I believer the main culprit was an eastern European country, but I can't remember which one.

We Romanians must try harder, it looks like there's some Netherlanders who can't remember us :)

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we should outlaw security research and any tools used in security research.

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[Neil Boekend]

Not quite. The magstripe swiping systems are so easy these days any idiot can do it. I believe it usually was a large gang with one tech savvy member and dozens of swipers. The swipers would send the data to their accomplices, who'd drain your bank account before you'd even get home.

The set consists of a magstripe swiper, a hidden camera (for example inside a folder holder) and a laptop. If these are preconnected the criminal can just plop in the swiper, place the hidden camera (stick the folder holder in the right place) and have correlated magstripe data and PIN. That data is emailed to the boss.

Re:If this information is widely disseminated

[Anonymous Coward]

Used bottom as a synonym for ass, rather than excluding "dollar", if that's what you mean.

Wont work around here...

[Lumpy]

99% of the ATM's around here dont stand alone. they are in a small concrete building that has air vents. the other 1% are the little fake ATM's at liquor stores and shady party stores that nobody sane would insert their card into.

so no, I wont be seeing it around here.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Chrisq]

the other 1% are the little fake ATM's at liquor stores and shady party stores that nobody sane would insert their card into.

To be fair most of these just rip you off legally with huge withdrawal charges

Re:Wont work around here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no they don't.

When I travel to the US from England I always use the small generic cash machines.

Bank of America wants $3 for each withdrawal.

The small no-name machines take $1.25-$2.

I know it's a tiny difference, but at least be honest about it.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Chrisq]

Actually no they don't.

When I travel to the US from England I always use the small generic cash machines.

Bank of America wants $3 for each withdrawal.

The small no-name machines take $1.25-$2.

I know it's a tiny difference, but at least be honest about it.

I have to admit I was thinking that it would be the same as the machines in small shops in the UK (where banks give free withdrawals and small machines charge). I stand corrected.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Richard_at_work]

Its about the same here - the technique they are talking about here is for the (typically) bank owned ATMs which are fixed in place, in a wall.

The technique for the independent cash machines is simply to break into the store, tie a chain around them, attach the chain to a 4x4 and drive off - it yanks the cash machine off the fixture and usually breaks it open as well.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Anonymous Coward]

No probs, I'm sure there may be other stories out there to counteract my own - there doesn't seem to be any standard when it comes to these things.

Interestingly I find in the UK it is all very different, with ATM fees being much rarer, and POS fees non-existent.

If you want to experience a fees-based-nightmare head to Australia some time. Most accounts (standard everyday style accounts) charge the following fees:monthly account fee, withdrawal fee from ATM, withdrawal fee from bank counter(!) and POS fee for using your card to make a purchase.

Now some banks offer all kinds of "deals" to give you some fee relief, but they are all in the same category as mobile phone charges: deliberately confusing to ensure the customer doesn't really know what's going on. So for example, in Oz, some banks offer $20 of fee credits to use each month. Others give you X free withdrawals, but not POS transactions, etc... and others will waive the monthly fee if you do something they want: deposit, withdrawal, etc...

Anyway, all of this is only interesting to the point that you realize that world-wide banks are all a bunch of assholes.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Anonymous Coward]

PS: In case it wasn't clear, in Oz it's common for banks to charge you for withdrawals from their own machines. Not all to be fair, but most. It's so rampart in Oz that the banks are constantly running afoul of the fair trading commission:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/choice-urges-accc-to-investigate-bank-charges/story-fn3dxity-1225967327642?nk=6aba634af8978d6f84c21594053be45a

Wow! What a URL!!

Re:Wont work around here...

[Chrisq]

Sounds like what would happen here if banking was run by the mobile phone industry

Re:Wont work around here...

[beelsebob]

What makes you think that ATMs in europe aren't embedded in a small concrete building?

Note - that small concrete building usually has a door in the back of it so that a guy can come along, open it, and then fill up the ATM with cash. That again, is the weak point that the explosion will blow out.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you RTFA? I guess not. The ATMs that were attacked were not liquor store standalone ATMs, they were ATMs installed into banks.

Re:Wont work around here...

[__aaclcg7560]

You need a forklift to pull those ATMs out. A number of years ago in Silicon Valley, someone drove up to a Wells Fargo branch office with a forklift, jiggled the ATM out of the brickwork, and took off down the road. Don't think the police ever solved that case or recovered the ATM.

Re:Wont work around here...

[houghi]

In Belgium these small concrete buildings are called 'banks' most of the times. So entering them through the backdoor will set of an alarm. I assume that this will be the case in those that are not banks as well.

Re:Wont work around here...

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a lot of stores with those little ATMs that will refund the fee, usually a sign is posted on there saying something like "ATM FEE $2.50. BRING ATM RECEIPT TO COUNTER FOR $2.50 DISCOUNT ON CASH PURCHASE."

For awhile in the early 2000s, if you had an ATM card in the Cirrus network, they would refund any out of network ATM fee. So you could actually come out ahead a couple bucks by double dipping. Go into the store, withdraw $20 from the ATM, the store would refund your fee (as a discount on whatever you bought) and Cirrus would credit you for the fee, too. Cirrus quit eating the fees a few years back though. :(

Re:Wont work around here...

[StikyPad]

It was Houston. Not surprisingly, they caught the guy almost immediately.

Re:Wont work around here...

[__aaclcg7560]

A Wells Fargo ATM was stolen by forklift in San Jose about ten years ago. Google isn't being helpful in finding the video that showed how easy it was to haul off an ATM with a forklift.

Re:Wont work around here...

[rastos1]

There was a series of robberies here some time back where the robbers stole a powerful car, put a steel cable around the ATM machine and tore it off (the ATM was attached to the floor with thick steel screws) and drive away with the whole machine. At one occasion they were caught on camera. Interestingly in this case the car was Porsche Cayene ;-). They did 13 machines over the course of almost two years and manged to steal 1.7E6 euro. They got caught at #14 by accident. Another video seems to be from Poland where they used a steel cable to tear the ATM apart and take the boxes with cash.

Re:Wont work around here...

[gweihir]

In Europe, there was a ruling that withdrawals at the Bank's own ATMs must be free, as the Bank is the one owing you money and cannot charge for paying you back.

Japanese solution!

[Justpin]

Or they do what they do annoyingly in Japan/Mongolia (some places in China)and some places in Hong Kong and Taiwan. That is they put the ATM machines inside a small lobby of a bank and when the bank closes the shutters come down on the ATM lobby as well.

Re:Japanese solution!

[jittles]

In Germany a lot of small suburb banks require you to use your ATM card to open the lobby door after hours. At least that was my experience a few years ago. This doesn't prevent someone from using a stolen card to gain access to the bank lobby, but it forces the criminals to enter into a lighted and monitored building before they can engage in any shenanigans.

Re:Japanese solution!

[ColdWetDog]

At my local bank you need the ATM card to get into the lobby after hours.

Or, at least, some random card with mag stripe. It doesn't appear to make any difference.

Re:Japanese solution!

[kju]

Many banks in Germany have changed this now because many of these card readers had been modified for skimming purposes in the past. So our banks have now upgraded most ATM with antiskimming devices and they either leave the door open or have replaced the card reader with a simple "open doorf" push button.

Also it brings no security (any criminal who wants to enter will be able to present a working card and be it a prepaid credit card just bought at the gas station). I also believe the main reasoning for the requirement of a card to enter the lobby was to keep out homeless people.

Re:Japanese solution!

[redcaboodle]

Most banks in Germany have changed this practice. There was to much trouble with skimmers exchanging the readers. The readers at the door are not covered by cameras and less secure than the ones in the actual ATM.

Re:Japanese solution!

[Jaime2]

We have those in the US. I use various cards in those for fun to see what works. For some reason, it's entertaining to me to use a Microsoft Certified Professional card to get into an ATM vestibule.

Re:Japanese solution!

[PPH]

Then the trick is to make the door and lobby out of high strength glass. Let them push the button to get in. But lock the door if tampering is detected and send an alarm to the police. Perps delivered, all sealed in a nice box.

Re:Japanese solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in Germany many banks have "chutes" where the cash comes up from a vault. Good luck trying to rob one of those.

Re:Japanese solution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those only exist to keep out homeless people (otherwise it's a warm sheltered place for them to sleep)

Re:Japanese solution!

[putaro]

Well, many banks shut down their ATM network at night anyhow in Japan so it's not as though it makes any difference.

There are standalone ATMs at many convenience stores in Japan. Thieves have taken to busting in the window with a backhoe and grabbing the whole machine.

Re:Japanese solution!

[markxz]

I remember a UK building society had passbooks with a (standard) barcode that would open the lobby door.

Having an open lobby seems to be offering a warm indoor sleeping area to the homeless.

Re:Japanese solution!

[BitwiseX]

My local bank (VA, USA) does this as well. However I suspect they are encoded to the first 4 digits (assigned to your bank and easily discovered) of the magstripe. I can tell you my expired Wachovia card still opened that door. (Tried that out of pure curiosity). Seems pretty simple to bypass..

Re:Japanese solution!

[strikethree]

In Germany a lot of small suburb banks require you to use your ATM card to open the lobby door after hours.

This was in place in the early nineties when I visited an ATM in one of the World Trade Center towers.

New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Chrisq]

There are a load of solutions that will work with new ATMs, a number of them already mentioned. What is needed is a cheap retro-fit, without modifying the strong box. Many banks don't upgrade this expensive component for years. I think the most promising ideas are ones that ink the money - but they have to get well in to the whole stack. A thin red edge that could be trimmed won't be good enough.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Wycliffe]

There are a load of solutions that will work with new ATMs, a number of them already mentioned. What is needed is a cheap retro-fit, without modifying the strong box. Many banks don't upgrade this expensive component for years. I think the most promising ideas are ones that ink the money - but they have to get well in to the whole stack. A thin red edge that could be trimmed won't be good enough.

Retrofitting machines to ink the money shouldn't be an issue at all. It would be simple to make small fragile glass packs of various
sizes filled with ink. Then you should be able to apply them with double sided tape anywhere and everywhere inside the machine
there is a void. If you wanted to go one step further you could fill some of the glass packs with different chemicals that when
combined produced combustion and incinerated the bills further. That should be enough to retrofit existing machines assuming
they have any amount of voids. This would also prevent stealing the ATM machine as the glass packs would break if someone
tried to yank the atm with a chain, etc...

Probably the most important part though is putting a sticker on the front that says that you use ink packs so that people know
or assume that even if they are crazy enough to try to blow up an atm that they probably won't get anything.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[aaarrrgggh]

The cash is in cassettes inside the vault, so the ink needs to be in the cassette. I don't think the cassettes are physically large enough to do that, but if they are due packs are already integrated.

But, other factors are going to limit how successful the attack is in a modern bank in the US. There are a number of defense in depth features that should get people caught. Surprised it works in Europe.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't work in the ATM industry, do you? Retrofitting machines is a HUGE logistical and financial undertaking. Why this is scored 5 interesting is beyond me.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just put packets of high explosives around the money. Any attempt to steal the money can level the whole building.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[jabuzz]

Just poor in some liquid nitrogen first to freeze the ink. In fact the whole ink thing seems rather trivial to get around using this technique in most scenarios.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[StikyPad]

If you wanted to go one step further you could fill some of the glass packs with different chemicals that when combined produced combustion and incinerated the bills further.

No that anyone here is designing or implementing an ATM security system, but something that could/would harm an intruder would probably count as a booby trap, and those are illegal. Nothing worse than having to fork over money to the guy who tried to steal your money.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Chrisq]

You don't work in the ATM industry, do you? Retrofitting machines is a HUGE logistical and financial undertaking. Why this is scored 5 interesting is beyond me.

Actually I used to, and if it is something that can be done with a cassette switch then it is not a huge undertaking. Remember in terms of the money inside the cost of ATM parts is pretty small.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Wycliffe]

No that anyone here is designing or implementing an ATM security system, but something that could/would harm an intruder would probably count as a booby trap, and those are illegal. Nothing worse than having to fork over money to the guy who tried to steal your money.

The key points there are "concealed" and "designed to harm". There are plenty of places that
have electric fences and razor wires protecting their properties. As long as it's properly labeled it's
perfectly legal.

Re:New ATMs - loads of solutions

[Wycliffe]

You don't work in the ATM industry, do you? Retrofitting machines is a HUGE logistical and financial undertaking. Why this is scored 5 interesting is beyond me.

I was suggesting a simple solution that doesn't require a huge expensive retrofit.
I almost included in my post that my solution also wasn't considering politics or red tape
in my suggestion. A double sided tape solution would probably be rejected by a huge
committee of bureaucrats but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't work.

Probably won't happen soon

[MagickalMyst]

I used to fix these types of machines. In training we were shown examples of the lengths that people go to to get inside these machines. The most successful that we saw was a group of thieves in South America who used explosives to blow open the safe.

It worked - but they blew up all the money too.

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[Pallas Athena]

They didn't show you the real successfull video's. They do exist - but just possibly, maybe, they are not very keen to share methods that do work...

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[ihtoit]

the way to do it (and fuck Mythbusters, or Brainiac, this works) is to pump water in through the keyhole or whatever hole, stuff in a detonator cap and fire. You will blow the door clean off the hinges and the money will be a bit wet. Water is basically incompressible, the pressure wave from the detonation will seek the path of least resistance to escape the system which confines it.

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[swb]

I know you said fuck Mythbusters, but didn't they do a bit on watering a safe and trying to shock wave it open? I seem to remember it not working that well.

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[JeffAtl]

Most of their problem was that using a cutting torch to open a hole for the insertion of the water. The heat of the torch in the closed space of the safe melted or burned everything inside.

Also, Mythbusters is almost going to show a successful criminal approach - they are too reliant on the cooperation of law enforcement. The only successful ones they show are ones that are too impractical.

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[Whorhay]

They chalked it up as plausible because there are historical accounts of it being done succesfully. They were not able to replicate the results but that of course doesn't mean it isn't possible. Using a thermal lance would probably work in some cases and not in others depending on the construction of the safe. In the Mythbusters case it took longer with the lance than they expected and the heat from the lance destroyed the contents of the safe. Their safe was also very leaky such that just filling it with water was problematic, meaning a lot of the pressure from the detonation was probably able to escape without doing any damage. Provided you can fill the safe with water without destroying the contents and minimal leakage, I'd give the method a good chance of success.

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[Anonymous Coward]

his problem is apparently that Mythbusters results don't agree with his plan.

If i recall the primary issue mythbusters had was that the safe wasn't waterproof, and so did not easily hold the water.

Re:Probably won't happen soon

[war4peace]

It usually backfires because the whole in which you stuck the detonator cap is the same the water will burst out of.

Encryption chips?

[Dan East]

What do encryption chips have to do with anything? If a card is stolen and known stolen, the owner can report the theft and the card is deactivated, whether or not it contains an "encryption chip". If the card is stolen and the owner does not know it was stolen, and the thief also has the pin, then they can use the card, whether or not it has an "encryption chip". Or am I totally understanding what this "encryption chip" does?

Re:Encryption chips?

[LordLucless]

Poor word choice in TFS. Chips don't make it harder to use stolen cards, they make it harder to use cloned cards.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debt card = ATM card in US. Buy lunch, waiter takes card, copies swipe as they charge your card for lunch, hand it back to you. Also can do same at Target while watching you enter PIN (IR filter on phone can work to do this), or at gas station replace card reader and forward contents as you copy mag stripe.

Chip in card means you need actual card, not a copy like is done in the US. Easier to copy and get pin in US than blowing up ATM because copied card does not work in UK. Stealing with a copied pin will have people look at picture of you doing it at ATM and that is all, blowing up ATM will actually have police trying to solve the crime.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

The concern is the number being stolen, not the physical card.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference it makes is to card *skimming* attacks AFAIK.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can steal a credit cards information, and not the card, you can re-stripe and and reprint your own card with the same information, and use it everywhere with the right tools(including an ATM machine, although you'd need a PIN if it's debited at an ATM like you say.)

With the new system, this entire form of fraud that's actually somewhat common now will be eradicated; also, payment data won't be transferred in the clear from merchant to payment processor and card company and back, it'll be encrypted with the key on the card, if I understand the tech right.

The way it is now, nobody bothers going to an ATM machine because they can go to a Best Buy, pick up some sought after electronics like iPads and dump them for cash on Craigslist in a couple of hours. Without being able to use payment info like this, they'll turn back to the ATM machines where the money is stored, and this form of attack might be easier with the right tools than faking a card if you don't have it.

Re:Encryption chips?

[rastos1]

The encryption chip prevents copying of the card. Without the chip the card can be cloned and within minutes multiple copies of the card can be used around the world to withdraw money from the account.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do encryption chips have to do with anything? If a card is stolen and known stolen, the owner can report the theft and the card is deactivated, whether or not it contains an "encryption chip". If the card is stolen and the owner does not know it was stolen, and the thief also has the pin, then they can use the card, whether or not it has an "encryption chip". Or am I totally understanding what this "encryption chip" does?

People steal the data from your card's magnetic strip and your PIN by hacking a vendor's card reader. They then make a duplicate card, and withdraw money. The encryption chip prevents this by making the card much more difficult to duplicate.

Re:Encryption chips?

[jittles]

What do encryption chips have to do with anything? If a card is stolen and known stolen, the owner can report the theft and the card is deactivated, whether or not it contains an "encryption chip". If the card is stolen and the owner does not know it was stolen, and the thief also has the pin, then they can use the card, whether or not it has an "encryption chip". Or am I totally understanding what this "encryption chip" does?

The encryption chip prevents someone from duplicating your card, at least in theory. They could make a copy of your card using an ATM skimmer and then steal your PIN and you wouldn't even know that someone had access to your bank card.

Re:Encryption chips?

[the_other_chewey]

If a card is stolen and known stolen, the owner can report the theft and the card is deactivated, whether or not it contains an "encryption chip". If the card is stolen and the owner does not know it was stolen, and the thief also has the pin, then they can use the card, whether or not it has an "encryption chip".

The "not knowing it is stolen" is the point: Magstripe cards can be trivially copied.

The chips do an actual challenge-response handshake with a secret that never leaves the
chip, and cannot be copied (at least not without decapping and some very high end lab gear,
thereby also destroying the card - which prevents the "swipe card through a copying reader
and hand it back" attack).

Re:Encryption chips?

[MightyYar]

It just makes it harder to counterfeit the card. You could put a card reader/keypad reader on an ATM and harvest hundreds of number/PIN combinations and then fabricate fake cards to use those credentials. If there is also a chip, this becomes more difficult. I have to assume that in the US, number/PIN harvesting does not cost the banks enough money to jump on board with the chips, which would require retrofits to their machines (over 2 million in the US) and more expensive cards.

Re:Encryption chips?

[JeffAtl]

Agree completely and very informative.

Would like to add that it's very a poor idea in the first place to use debit cards for those types of transactions rather than a credit card.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be harder to counterfeit, but it is still very possible to create fraudulent charges in the Chip-n-pin system. There are entire criminal rings in Europe centered around it. Chip-n-pin was from most accounts created primarily to try to offload financial liability of fraudulent charges from the banks to the consumers and wherever it is implemented I would suspect the same motivation is not far behind. Thankfully at least in Europe backlash caused the banks to reverse course and revert back to the standard credit card liability, but it took a whole lot of pressure and several major news stories proving that the system was still very vulnerable and that millions of dollars were being stolen from consumers before they caved.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Megane]

Not all ATM cards are debit cards. (I think you can even use credit cards, but you'll be subject to the credit card company's steep cash withdrawal charges.)

Back before the banks realized how much money they could make off of fees (and also have YOU be responsible for fraud) and went nuts with debit cards, back in the '90s there was such a thing as an ATM-only card, usually based off of a network like Pulse, Plus, or Cirrus. The fun part was that these networks had regional coverage, so when traveling you had to look for your network's logo on the machine to be sure you could get money from it.

I still have a Pulse card from my bank that I got in the mid '90s. I keep worrying that at some point it will wear out and stop working and I will have to go to the trouble of getting another, and if they will even make new non-debit ATM cards anymore.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Megane]

by hacking a vendor's card reader

They haven't bothered with that for years. These days they put a faceplate over the card reader with a second card reader inside to skim the card data. Then they either have a telescopic camera nearby to watch for PINs or they include a keypad as part of the fake faceplate.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Megane]

That's why credit cards in the US have a 3-digit number printed on the back for when you make online purchases. A skimmer can't read that number, at least not without including a really good camera to scan an image of the card.

Re:Encryption chips?

[Coren22]

What you just described is a Debit card in the US, not an ATM card which is only useful at an ATM.

Word missing from the summary

[gwjgwj]

*Automatic* ATM Machines.

Re:Word missing from the summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer semiautomatics.

steal truck, drive it into atm, haul ATM away

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen recently in the news in the US where thieves will steal a truck, crash it backwards into an ATM, the thieves jump out, load the ATM into the back of the stolen truck, then they drive away. The entire process takes less than a minute. The stolen truck and the ATM minus cash will usually be found abandoned a few miles away.

Limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, when you have a card, you are limited to a few hundred dollars for a withdrawal.

Blowing up the ATM gets you all the cash in there. AND it removes the evidence of the criminals identity - you blow up the security camera. Whereas, when you use a stolen card, you are being videoed by the system - sure, you could wear a mask, but it's gonna look really weird to anyone passing by and will call the cops.

Re: Limits

[kenh]

the exploding ATM will draw a lot more attention than your choice of headwear...

The mythbusters need to test this now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs Mythbusters.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/watch-fazakerley-man-andrew-white-8539648

Because you can get the pin thru social engineerin

[aepervius]

US card can be more or less copied at will and have no security whatsoever. In which case you can copy the card, leaving the user thinking he still has it and will not report it stolen, and using pads, or social engineering or plain peeking, get the pin. results : since there is no encryption chip and the card can be copied, the ONLY security is the pin. With encrypted chip the additional security is the encrypted chip is far harder to copy.

Just a guess.

Re:From the Department of Redundancy Department

[gwjgwj]

Whoosh

ONE gang

[Anonymous Coward]

90 ATMs is ONE gang, going around breaking into ATMs, so you just need to catch that gang.

Just vent it

[Anonymous Coward]

All they need is a chimney and a blower.

Re:Just vent it

[Anonymous Coward]

simple solution to that. plug the chimney so it can't vent.

heck it has to be sucking air in somewhere if it is blowing it out the chimney, so bonus points if you use the intake for the blower to help suck the gas in.

Re:From the Department of Redundancy Department

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

Joke Explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the second sentence of the summary. You will see the words "ATM machines" in there. The GP is just making fun of that.

Re:Joke Explained

[PPH]

The author suffers from RAS Syndrome

Sigh.

[ledow]

Criminals gaining entry to an ATM after blasting a huge hole in it? Not really the kind of thing the everyday guy has to worry about.

I mean, you've got to linger by an ATM for a while, cause a huge blast, then get round the back, gather the exploded money, etc. If you're prepared to do that, you'll find any number of ways of going that far anyway.

And in the UK, ATM's are everywhere - in shops, post offices, out in the street, etc. You can't protect them all. There are no really "secure" ATMs here - not in location or design.

You just make it so that they have to do all this to hopefully draw attention. But you can't protect against every attack.

Re:From the Department of Redundancy Department

[Chelloveck]

What? He isn't referring to Automated Asynchronous Transfer Mode Machines?

I call bullshit

[ihtoit]

I'm in the UK, if there had been even one ATM blown up it'd be all over the news.

Absolutely. Fucking. NOTHING.

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

You know you have to actually read the news, right? Or watch it. Or you could, you know, Google it. The first page alone has these:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2890823/Caught-camera-Thief-s-plan-blow-ATM-backfires-s-knocked-feet-blast.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-robbers-jailed-30-years-3869094
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2629518/Now-thats-call-hole-wall-Thieves-blow-petrol-station-ATM-leave-without-penny.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gang-who-blew-up-cash-4172058
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/25/driver-gang-blowing-texaco-atm-jailed ... or you could call bullshit on stuff you know nothing about, without doing any research, just because you didn't happen to have the story spoonfed to you already.

Re:I call bullshit

[Megane]

The first of your links refers to an incident in Australia. Just because it's on the Daily Fail doesn't mean it happened in the UK. And the third one? Maybe if petrol wasn't taxed so highly they could have just towed the ATM away. Fourth link shows a long list of ATMs that were hit by one gang... maybe it's just a few gangs of yobbos with little common sense?

instructions

[Anonymous Coward]

Mostly they are coming soon thanks to Bloomberg helpfully posting an illustrated set of instructions on how to do this...

Re:From the Department of Redundancy Department

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh.

Blowing up the ATM doesn't always work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a case that almost resulted in a Darwin award:

http://consumerist.com/2014/12...

inert gas

[orgelspieler]

Why not just supply the guts of the ATM with a nitrogen blanket? Seems like that would keep the acetylene from exploding inside the ATM.

Re:inert gas

[PPH]

A fan and a vent pipe routed to a safe location. You suck the gas out faster then they can blow it in. Add a pilot light to the top of the vent and burn off the combustible gas. A visible gas flare above the bank should discourage the crooks from sticking around.

Re:inert gas

[istartedi]

Too much of a fire hazard. I don't see any local fire marshal wanting to sign off on such a thing. I'd go with a gas detector that sounds an alarm and releases CO2 into the chamber. It would rapidly displace whatever they managed to pump in. The cold steam hissing out of the box would also give them one heck of a startle.

Is this REALLY a hard problem to solve?

[DrXym]

I would have thought that drilling some holes into the back, top or underside of the ATM would fix the problem. The ATM might need some steel plates on the inside of the holes to stop people poking wires through into the machine itself but it shouldn't be rocket science to solve. The underside would be better on the basis that these ATMs are likely to be heavy and fixed to the floor with bolts so the underside would be less accessible.

Amateurs...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have even better deterrence. Instead of packing if with dyes pack it with dynamite. You know, to make big enough explosion to kill the robbers on the spot. Let this practice be known.

Video of ATM Detonation Gone Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw this australian video a few weeks ago and while it is pretty funny that the guy loses his shoes, I didn't understand how he came up with this scheme in the first place. Now it makes sense.

FYI, here's the news story with a photo of the damage.

And if gas does not work, try water...

[ramriot]

Seems Jamie and Adam got there way ahead of all of us (New myth to test):
http://youtu.be/dxgPX5-cmvc?t=...
If you allow for the fact that in their case the had to burn a small hole in the top which set fire to the contents first before filling the enclosure with water, which in the case of an ATM you don't have to, than its a reasonable idea.

Praise the non-violent

[mi]

stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM.

Wow, that makes it sound like the card-thieves are nice folks — see, they are "nonviolent". Almost like the "unarmed" we read so much about recently.

What a way to turn a phrase and alter connotations — pick a nice-sounding synonym of many. Khmm, "quiet"? Neah... "Stealthy"? No... "Nonviolent" — yeah, that's it!!

Re:Praise the non-violent

[dave420]

That problem is in your head. The rest of us folks simply understand that they're describing the method.

Re:Praise the non-violent

[neminem]

It *is* nonviolent. I'd obviously rather not have my cards stolen at all, but if given the choice, I'd rather my cards be stolen by pickpocketing than by mugging, and I'd definitely rather they be stolen by pickpocketing than by someone blowing up an ATM while I might be standing nearby.

Re:Praise the non-violent

[mi]

It *is* nonviolent.

Sure. It is also "quiet" and "stealthy" — and a bunch of other things. Which is the best term to use in this context? That depends on the subtle connotations of each one, does not it? I am willing to believe, TFA's use was an honest mistake — the article makes no (other) suggestions, bank-robbing (violent or otherwise) may be a just thing. But...

Are the Somali pirates just that — pirates — or are they hard-working folks laboring in a harsh environment, risking their lives directing foreign aid to their impoverished country and the people, who need it most?

See also "Hezbollization".

Thanks OPEC!

[NMBob]

I knew lower gasoline prices would cause some kind of trouble. Who knew it would make it cheap enough to use to blow up ATMs?

Re:Thanks OPEC!

[Megane]

Actually they're using a gas, not "gas"oline. Acetylene or propane. Taste the meat, not the heat!

Re:Thanks OPEC!

[NMBob]

OH! Well in that case...Thanks OPEC!, except in the opposite way. $30-some to fill a tank is a lot better than $50-some. Of course, it's destroying some job markets, but there you go.

ask slashdot

[ruir]

How do I will I blow up an ATM machine? Brilliant, the skills people trapped in their mums basement learn here.

Re:Encryption chips? Broken!

[davecb]

Chip and pin has been broken in Europe since soon after it was introduced: see https://www.lightbluetouchpape...

The US is looking at chip-and-signature, which is safer for the customer , who go screwed by UK banks claiming that chip and pin was perfect, therefor any losses were the customer's fault.

Courtesy of Ross Anderson, one of the serious researchers in the sucurity world.

Amateurs

[SlovakWakko]

This is all too complicated. Here in Slovakia you just take a powerful enough car, a strong steel cable, and do this: http://tv.sme.sk/v/14692/pacha... (commentary is in Slovak, but the main thing: it was a Porsche Cayenne and the ATM held 130.000 EUR at the time). The same group did this several times, earning the nickname "the ATM mafia". Meanwhile, they have been caught, held for some months and then released because a judge "missed" a deadline for shuffling papers to a higher court (sitting in the same building).

Re:Amateurs

[Anonymous Coward]

... a powerful enough car, a strong steel cable ...

That happened in my country a few times so banks started bolting the ATM to the floor and reinforcing the outside wall. Also, once or twice, thieves dragged the ATM too far so the money caught fire.

More violence

[Anonymous Coward]

So in the countries that have solved the gas attack problem do they see more people held up and forced to give up their ATM cards?

Re:From the Department of Redundancy Department

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out the only dumb one is you. And humorless too. I bet people love being around you.

Whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[PPH]

You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off

Re:Whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Gibgezr]

A classic. Gotta love Sir Michael.

stealing cards is non-violent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused. I just read an article where someone was held up at knife-point (armed robbery). The suspect asked for the victim's wallet that contained cash, driver's license, social security card and credit cards. Who keeps their social security card in their wallet or purse?

The Solution Is Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Just turn atm's into money printers. That's how they get their money anyways. Then all the banks need worry about is ink and paper.
Damn I'm smart

that's the problem. 3/16th" hole = opened

[raymorris]

Having a small slit (for money to come out) is precisely how they are getting broken into. If I can slide a thin piece of steel inside, I can open it. One method I use to open safes is to drill two holes, each 3/16th of an inch. One hole is for my pinhole camera so I can see inside. The other hole is to insert long, thin tools which I use to partially disassemble the mechanism from within.

Re:that's the problem. 3/16th" hole = opened

[hey!]

The issue as I'm sure you know isn't "opened", but rather "opened within a certain length of time." Obviously given unlimited time you can get into anything, and you probably can get into an ATM a lot faster than a decent safe. But once you have the explosion routine down pat, you can probably be away with the ATM money in *seconds*. In terms of practicality and low risk, that's hard to beat.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why use a bomb?

[edibobb]

You don't need a bomb if you've got a proper pickup truck. http://www.dallasnews.com/news...

Airgap

[Tim12s]

Just close the airgap. Split the atm into 3 distinct containers with separate air sections. The electronics and wires can move between the walls. The card tray and mechanism can be separated with an air vent back into the lobby. The dispenser tray can vent to the lobby and have money dropped into it and out of it in an air tight seal.

Problem solved. It's probably possible to retro fit to existing enclosures with a bit I'd thought work.

Re:Airgap

[RockDoctor]

Hmmm, if you're talking about retrofitting, then I'd look at fitting a small amount of a catalyst - platinised mineral wool or something like like that - into the routing from gas inlet to main body. Temperature sensor in the main chassis, if the flames don't cook the money automatically. Possibly route the flames out of the front of the ATM. At about crotch level.

The cost of the catalyst would be considerably lower than the cost of retrofitting anything.

A very simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be a spark plug inside the ATM that triggers every ~5 seconds. Then the gas will explode in the attackers' faces, before there is enough of it to cause the safe door to blow open,

Better summary

[HappyDrgn]

"the U.S. doesn't require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM. "

In other words encryption leads to violence!

"That's not a knife, that's a knife!"

[Anonymous Coward]

... Just include a secondary explosive, rather than ink capsules for the requisite earth-shattering kaboom ...

Inflation

[Livius]

Because they're desperately hoping to avoid the inflation that will start as soon as people notice how drastically they've devalued the currency, and changing the money would be too big of a clue.

true. The explosion attracts attention (alarm sire

[raymorris]

You have a point there. On the other hand, generally one of the best deterrents to crime is a loud alarm siren. Crooks don't like to attract attention. If your solution to making it "more secure" means they can get in silently, rather than having to set off an explosion, many bad guys will very much appreciate your improvement.

Behind broadband and bank robberies

[Anonymous Coward]

Behind broadband and bank robberies - time to catch up?

High Risk Crime

[Anonymous Coward]

Using explosives in the US (though this seems to be more about gas vapors than actual explosives) would likely result in the full weight of US law enforcement hunting you down and pumping you full of bullets (see Boston bombings for more details).

Explosives are used quite often in Europe in crimes, but it's quite rare in the US.

Wel, we still have plenty of ATMs....

[vandamme]

...that run Windows instead of Linux. So they won't have to resort to explosives for a while.