Vacationing Security Researcher Exposes Austrian ATM Skimmer (carbonblack.com)

While vacationing with his family in Vienna, Ben Tedesco (from security company Carbon Black) discovered an ATM skimmer "in the wild", perfectly crafted to look like the original card reader. New submitter rmurph04 shares Ben's story: I went to grab some cash from an ATM. Being security paranoid, I repeated my typical habit of checking the card reader with my hand as I have hundreds of times. Today's the day when my security awareness paid off!
Ben's blog post includes a video demonstrating the ATM skimmer, as well as close-ups showing the device had its own control board, strip reader, and even its own battery.

Comments

Re: How can this work with European smart cards?

[Yenya]

The magnetic strip can easily be erased by a strong magnet (e.g. a neodymium one from a broken HDD). I erased the one on my credit card myself two years ago. However, I have since discovered that there are still payment terminals in Europe, which use solely the magnetic strip. For example, the highway toll gates in Italy and France.

This is an older skimmer...

[toonces33]

The newer ones are designed to be "installed" in the cardslot so you can't even see them. Pulling on the green thing will no longer be sufficient.

Re:Solution

[thegarbz]

That's a great idea but an image recognition nightmare if you can't control the environment. Outdoors between the sun moving, clouds, rain, street lights, etc doing such side by side recognition to catch such a minute detail would be incredibly difficult.