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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.
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.
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.
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)
bickerdyke
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...
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.