Yes, we hold the whole clone market accountable for the standardization of cases to make this possible. If it wasn't for the fact that PC motherboards actually fit into a specific size parameter all of this would not really be a viable business option. It was this concept of modular parts that won me over to the PC over things like the Macintosh, who were very hip to changing their case parameters from year to year.
Hi-Fis were at one time actually pieces of furnature for example. For a price, you could for example buy a combo record player / radio just about anywhere, and there was a choice of wood and finishes available. People I know who bought such things new only stopped using them when they failed... usually when the record player's glue dripped to the platter.
I have thought about PC and household design, I must admit these cases are most attractive. I also am fond of the idea of incorperating a PC into a desk it self, as a pull out drawer perhaps. That would certainly fetch a serious premium, but be about as unobtrusive as you can get.
No, the NZ crimes act states that ownership of any property stays with the owner until it is legally assigned to some other entity. So even if a CD is stolen, the owner remains the legal licensee.
Unless you have some proof that you own it, I can see it very hard to defend.
If someone liberated the media and not the case, I can see as proof of ownership... but without a case or other proof of purchace, i'd say you're SOL.
With a jigsaw and some spare time you can do what I did and put an ATX backplate in there.
I'm not at all opposed to cutting an atx hole in a case that has enough in the way of platform. I have an old gateway case I did this too. I've done this many times.
However, my AT case only has enough in the way of platform for baby AT motherboards, not full sized AT motherboard. ATX will offen fit perfectly in a true blue full sized AT case. I could spotweld or screw in an additional platform, switch to a baby AT power supply, and I might beable to mount in a full sized ATX board... but given the low cost of replacement cases, I just scrapped it.
Agreed... old fisher tube based amplifiers / radio receivers often had wooden cases. My current receiver is circa late 70s, it's PS is rated for well into the 300watt spectrum... it doesn't catch fire. Both are passively cooled with linier power supplies if i'm not mistaken. Your PC with it's switching power supply shouldn't be much of a problem. It has a fuse, your house has a breaker. Not a problem.
I'll submit that wood is more of an insolater then steel or aluminium... and is less likely to be good at passive cooling... lets say in the event that your fan fails.
Yes... the ti 99/4a, though I believe the ti 99/4 was also the same color scheme. In fact, all the TI stuff I had was silver / chrome, from the peripheral memeory expantion box down to the modem, though I never had a faux chrome TI monitor. Fortunatly they didn't make as many beige peripherals as the chrome ones.
I don't remember the commodore line well... I remember the later atari 1200xl / 800xl were beige / brown, where the XE series was more a slate grey. The last woodgrain atari atari I know of is the 2600... though I can't remember if pong / super pong had wood grain or not.
Knowing that 9 out of 10 cases never will be... shocking
I never thought i'd get rid of my old AT tower. You know the type taking the full sized power supply. Mine was black and hunter green, very smashing... but alas it had to be retired due to the fact that the best motherboard I could get for it is a 66mhz FSB penitum II / celeron class one.
Anybody else on this board that have moved toward woodworking?
I consider my self to be an amature. I've restored a number of old speakers like wooden sansuis mostly. Most of my experence is putty work and staining. The largest thing I constructed is a component stack for a friend, as well as making mods to my stereo component to accomidate the extra wide reciever I have.
I have more advanced plans in mind, like my desk for example, typical free standing L shaped partical board wonder.. already added a set of drawers, plan to replace the top with some spiffy wood.
Circa 1970s it was all woodgrain with chrome/ aluminium, or black plastic trim. For high tech items such as stereo recievers and even the atari 2600, this was where it was at. After all... it matched your TV.
Well, circa early 1980's, it was black and silver that was the fasion... black plastic and brush aluminium. My old TI was an example of this as well as well as the colecovision. We started to see faux plastic aluminium with our VCRs and such as seen with the toploaders. TVs were still often vinyl woodgrain, Sony had a Silver trinitron model, but black and grey monitor style TVs came into fasion tward the end of the decade.
Then came the skin tone beige... as seen with later TIs, colecovision adam, atari 400/800 and such. I believe also that IBM used a skintone beige as well. Some of my older workstation monitors like the hitachi reflected this bedge look.
Followed that was a slightly more mild beige, followed by white.... black for the rebels.
The answer is trivial when you think about it. While it's a bad thing to cut down entire rainforests of hardwood just to make mice, it's even worse to mine entire mountains level just so you get a 1337 aluminum case.
Empty soda can.... about 17 g Ennyah ATX case... 5 kg
Knowing your case can be recycled into about 294 cans of jolt cola... priceless
Hackers with Bill Gate's credit card ordered from the Adam and Eve catalog... now access to and from his home is now impossible due to the vast number of free gifts they send.
Bill Gates is seeking asking that this be considered a DOS attack, and approperate criminal charges be pressed. Meanwhile this Saturday there will be a massive garage sale in Bellevue.
It looks to me like the "abort retry or fail" option, which would sugest a media failure rather then a software crash... I can't tell from those pictures though.
I don't see a complex issue using DOS, microsoft or other, for a cash machine as dos is perfectly handy if all you need is a glorified terminal. While your typical DOS doesn't offer much in the way of security as far as accessing, modifying, or deleting files... it would be practicaly impossible without hooking up a keyboard, unlike windows with a virtual keyboard.
The only complex issue I see is the maintance of the filesystem, fat tends to be unreliable if you don't run chkdsk from time to time, assuming you actually use the disk for writing data that is.
Grey market is a term for goods bought in another country that may or may not carry the same warrenty as goods bought localy. I know in america for example it's very common to find goods bought over by people in Asia and sold over the counter at a discount.
You save a good deal of money... but sometimes the warrenty is no good. After all, part of the pricetag is warrenty service, and they are not paying for people all over the globe to service your goods. My experence with this is primarly cameras rather then laptops.
It is something to take into account when buying goods overseas.
Do You intend to use this equipment to: Develop Nuclear Chemical or Biological weapons? Y [] N [] Do you intend to use this equipment to develop ballistic technologies? Y [] N []
I believe these are legit questions regarding the export of encryption technologies. I believe these laws are in part due WWII regulations on encryption... which makes a fair amount of sence as it was war time after all... and we in America grow attached to our laws... or rather they just stay on the books just in case we need them again.
There are also laws regarding encrypting information for export outside the US. You can encrypt the bible for example and send it to Castro, but you can't encrypt information regarding nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons for export to a Canadian for example without a license.
Would anyone actually check those boxes??
If you were a legit researcher in the production of weapons technology for example, then you would check these boxes. You may also get a license to export encryption technology. http://www.bxa.doc.gov/
This is not to say you can't lie about the subject, get a laptop, encrypt top secret documents, export them, and use them in a way that contrasts US interests. What I am saying is there is a legit logical reason for these questions... and if yes, a procedure they must follow for sale of products to people who plan to develop weapons technolgies on foreign soil.
While this doesn't apply to you directly, as you are UK... let me tell you about my experence taking PCs cross the Canadian border.
Officer: Do you plan to leave anything in Canada Me: A computer and some beer Officer: What kinda of computer me: ummmm.... Asus a7v400 (showing the manual which was on the dash) Officer: (short pause) you know beer can't be a gift, it's only for personal use me: umm... I planed to share it Officer: You said you were going to leave it, i'm just telling you it can't be a gift, OK! go ahead
As usual, I was expecting to have to pay some form of duty on this pc, after all it's fair, reasonable, and the law. It's not like I didn't declair it, after all what else would you call a custom build PC with an asus motherboard. But hey, they didn't want to charge me duty on it, that's just spiffy.
I think there are people out there who still believe that nasa spend millions / billions of dollars to develop a pen that would work in outerspace. http://www.spacepen.com/usa/index2.htm
According to this site http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacep en.asp there was a pen developed by Fisher, and sold 400 to nasa in the late 60s at a cost of $2.95 a piece. Also according to the site, over one million was spent by Fisher for development.
Now... i've heard references over the years regarding this pen, mostly jokes how the former Soviet Union's space program saved money by using pencils, and even as an illistration for NASAs over spending. The figure seems to range between 1 million all way to 12 billion in some cases. But regardless of whether Nasa actually spent money to develop this technology or not, it is still perceived by many to be a fact and not just an urban legend.
You know there are many benefits to running something proprietary
This is security through obscurity. While this can work in some cases, i'm not going to touch the topic of benifits vs harm.
I wasn't even thinking about the benifits of running something proprietory... I was thinking of the benifits of something designed to act like a terminal and not have the ability to access any information via the touch screen interface like the freaking start menu.
I think one of the major benifits of the vintage cash machine isn't so much the fact that it's secure because it's obsolete... but the simple fact that they didn't boot up via a re-writable media whether it be disc drive or even flash roms. A software upgrade for such a device running on roms/proms/eproms requires physical access.
I don't feel it's about keepign it obscure, it's about not permiting you to make changes in it's operation via a touch screen interface, nor have the ability to save changes that would affect the way it operates.
I doubt it's the employee that just made up that policy. I'm sure that someone in the bank already thought of the cloning issues and that is why it their policy forbids the returning of lost cards.
Really? I lost my card once and my bank was nice enough to phone me up and say someone returned it.
Exactly _how_ would you go around hacking this ATM? OK, you can open windows and possibly run simply batch files. Does Windows XP have a built in assembler or other language that can be programmed to control the cash dispenser? Have you any other way to introduce the code you'd need to take control of the devices? Someone mentioned smartcard readers, but _exactly_ how do you introduce a smartcard via a touch screen? Has anyone _ever_ demonstrated an exploit on WinXP that is done by typing printable text into the regular user interface?
Why would you need to program the cash dispenser? Assuming the cash dispenser is just a serial device... just use hyperterminal or "echo whatever comX:" / "copy con: comX"" If you need anything beyond what the keyboard provides use the alt code, three digit for ascii, 4-5 digits for unicode.
Assuming we're talking about a printer like the HP LJ II or something similar....
i.e. echo [alt]012[alt] prn: should send a ctrl-l to the printer, cause it to spew out a page. You could just use ctrl-l under command.com
Useful command if for example you are running dos apps with a standard printer laser / ink jet, but the software doesn't issue a form feed to eject what you printed.
if the cash dispenser itself was controlled by simple command-line programs, it would be easy. Start | Run program | "c:\bin\gimmecash 1000". But somehow I don't think so...
It might very well be as simple as Start | Run | echo 20 com1:
In theory you could even put something like this in the startup script to spew out money everytime the thing crashes and reboots. I don't know the protocals their despencers use...likely is not going to be 20 = 20 dollars... but it wouldn't shock me if it were under a few keystrokes.
True, except that modern ATMs will have biometrics (finger scanners and whatnot), plus that printer thingy that gives your receipt, then there's the monitor, maybe some sort of check scanner for inputting money, a dispenser for giving cash, and viola, you have attached devices which need drivers.
I'll agree the modern ATM will have all these things... but just because you have devices doesn't mean you need drivers in a the modular sense. There was a time when we hardcoded applications to specific devices, like printers and scanners for example.
1. finger scanners
This is true, but it's not like the ATM it self actually stores the database of account numbers vs fingerscanner... I would imagine that this is stored in your bank records. Get scan, send data to bank... if scan = record permit transation
2. printer thingy that gives your receipt
I believe that your typical cash machine printer only prints in one font, on terminal paper. There are others who use impact, but this isn't a complex operation
3. there's the monitor
I'm rather old school in my attitde tward display, I still think a bank terminal display being a glorified typewriter
4. check scanner for inputting money
I believe you are talking about OCR... Magnetic ink bank account numbers are easy enough to read.. human print is slightly harder. I'll have to do some research and see what sorta system the post office does to peform OCR on hand printed postal codes. But again... this logic doesn't even have to happen at the cach machine. Scanner that gets triggered and send a bitmap to the bank in question, relays back to the bank the amount it read.
5. dispenser for giving cash
Again, not a complex operation. communicate to the dispencer which bill to spit out of the machine
---
All but biometrics and check scanners were operations the vintage cash machine peformed, without a standardized platform. Keep in mind that the actual verification process will still be peformed by the bank it self. I will continue to think of cash machines as glorified terminals. They gather data and communicate it to a remote location, remote location sends back information, and it displays, prints, and sometimes spews or accepts money.
1. With his contact info and where to send his card you could have gone on an internet spending spree.
Yes, I understand this fully. I assumed the guy was on vacation in washington from Alaska. As it turns out he was as he was listed in the phonebook
2. You could have cloned the card, if he continues using it you could at sometime in the future go on a fraudulent spending spree.
Sure I COULD have, but would a person cloning a card phone the damn bank from their home phone and be willing to share their contact info. If I wanted to go on a spending spree, I wouldn't have phoned the damn bank in the first place.
3. You could have cloned it in this situation too.
Sure I COULD have... but do you really think the employees are smart enough to think of this? Most of the ones I talk to are unaware you can make a copy. Do you think it's any complex issue activating a card that you thought was lost / stolen? It's painfuly easy, it's just a phonecall away.
Often times I find purses at Costco... left outside in the shopping cards. I make a good honest effort to find the owners in a timely fasion. Doesn't always work, and often times they call in their credit cards stolen, but fortunatly it's not a problem re-activating them.
There are those of us who would experence the same amount of FUD if it was running linux, if it was in single user with some form of access, and if there was a easy way to access a virtual keyboard and enter in data, and if all the useful utilities were already on this machine pre-compiled ready to be used.
It won't be long before we'll start to see credit cards employing smart card technology. In that event, they can store information above and beyond what a mag strip can store.
Then, you can indeed have a bit of data on your card. Whether or not it's possible to crash a machine with just the info on a mag stripe is beyond me presently. It wouldn't shock me if for example the cash machine before taking the time to verify the card peformed a checksum on the last 4 digits. If value = 0 and if it results in a divde by zero, i imagine it's possible to crash a machine with a card.
In fact... if a badly read card is the reason why these machines are crashing.
ATMs not connected to the Internet and without keyboard are pretty much unhackable unless you can pry open the case and attach a keyboard and/or wireless connection.
Bottom line is that some one needs to make a new ATM solution that works, propably on an open source platform (is that secure enough, you tell me), and most impotrant is...IT WORKS....
Platform? One of the nice things about vintage cash machines was the fact that the software was written in assembly. Let's face it, all a bank machine is is just a glorified terminal. It has no need to store information, no need to access disks, mount devices, nor access a network outside of it's banking protocal. There is no need for it to accept new software other then perhaps firmware update from time to time, nor the ability to run background processes. Doesn't need to do cron events or anything above and beyond take card, peform action on account, say thank you.
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Yes, we hold the whole clone market accountable for the standardization of cases to make this possible. If it wasn't for the fact that PC motherboards actually fit into a specific size parameter all of this would not really be a viable business option. It was this concept of modular parts that won me over to the PC over things like the Macintosh, who were very hip to changing their case parameters from year to year.
Hi-Fis were at one time actually pieces of furnature for example. For a price, you could for example buy a combo record player / radio just about anywhere, and there was a choice of wood and finishes available. People I know who bought such things new only stopped using them when they failed... usually when the record player's glue dripped to the platter.
I have thought about PC and household design, I must admit these cases are most attractive. I also am fond of the idea of incorperating a PC into a desk it self, as a pull out drawer perhaps. That would certainly fetch a serious premium, but be about as unobtrusive as you can get.
No, the NZ crimes act states that ownership of any property stays with the owner until it is legally assigned to some other entity. So even if a CD is stolen, the owner remains the legal licensee.
Unless you have some proof that you own it, I can see it very hard to defend.
If someone liberated the media and not the case, I can see as proof of ownership... but without a case or other proof of purchace, i'd say you're SOL.
"More blank CDs are now sold in New Zealand than pre-recorded discs."
:P
I thought this was due to the high cost of broadband
With a jigsaw and some spare time you can do what I did and put an ATX backplate in there.
I'm not at all opposed to cutting an atx hole in a case that has enough in the way of platform. I have an old gateway case I did this too. I've done this many times.
However, my AT case only has enough in the way of platform for baby AT motherboards, not full sized AT motherboard. ATX will offen fit perfectly in a true blue full sized AT case. I could spotweld or screw in an additional platform, switch to a baby AT power supply, and I might beable to mount in a full sized ATX board... but given the low cost of replacement cases, I just scrapped it.
Otherwise, i'd be happy to saw / dremmel away.
Agreed... old fisher tube based amplifiers / radio receivers often had wooden cases. My current receiver is circa late 70s, it's PS is rated for well into the 300watt spectrum... it doesn't catch fire. Both are passively cooled with linier power supplies if i'm not mistaken. Your PC with it's switching power supply shouldn't be much of a problem. It has a fuse, your house has a breaker. Not a problem.
I'll submit that wood is more of an insolater then steel or aluminium... and is less likely to be good at passive cooling... lets say in the event that your fan fails.
Was your old TI a TI-99/4A maybe?
Yes... the ti 99/4a, though I believe the ti 99/4 was also the same color scheme. In fact, all the TI stuff I had was silver / chrome, from the peripheral memeory expantion box down to the modem, though I never had a faux chrome TI monitor. Fortunatly they didn't make as many beige peripherals as the chrome ones.
I don't remember the commodore line well... I remember the later atari 1200xl / 800xl were beige / brown, where the XE series was more a slate grey. The last woodgrain atari atari I know of is the 2600... though I can't remember if pong / super pong had wood grain or not.
Knowing that 9 out of 10 cases never will be... shocking
I never thought i'd get rid of my old AT tower. You know the type taking the full sized power supply. Mine was black and hunter green, very smashing... but alas it had to be retired due to the fact that the best motherboard I could get for it is a 66mhz FSB penitum II / celeron class one.
Anybody else on this board that have moved toward woodworking?
I consider my self to be an amature. I've restored a number of old speakers like wooden sansuis mostly. Most of my experence is putty work and staining. The largest thing I constructed is a component stack for a friend, as well as making mods to my stereo component to accomidate the extra wide reciever I have.
I have more advanced plans in mind, like my desk for example, typical free standing L shaped partical board wonder.. already added a set of drawers, plan to replace the top with some spiffy wood.
Circa 1970s it was all woodgrain with chrome/ aluminium, or black plastic trim. For high tech items such as stereo recievers and even the atari 2600, this was where it was at. After all... it matched your TV.
Well, circa early 1980's, it was black and silver that was the fasion... black plastic and brush aluminium. My old TI was an example of this as well as well as the colecovision. We started to see faux plastic aluminium with our VCRs and such as seen with the toploaders. TVs were still often vinyl woodgrain, Sony had a Silver trinitron model, but black and grey monitor style TVs came into fasion tward the end of the decade.
Then came the skin tone beige... as seen with later TIs, colecovision adam, atari 400/800 and such. I believe also that IBM used a skintone beige as well. Some of my older workstation monitors like the hitachi reflected this bedge look.
Followed that was a slightly more mild beige, followed by white.... black for the rebels.
The answer is trivial when you think about it. While it's a bad thing to cut down entire rainforests of hardwood just to make mice, it's even worse to mine entire mountains level just so you get a 1337 aluminum case.
Empty soda can.... about 17 g
Ennyah ATX case... 5 kg
Knowing your case can be recycled into about 294 cans of jolt cola... priceless
Hackers with Bill Gate's credit card ordered from the Adam and Eve catalog... now access to and from his home is now impossible due to the vast number of free gifts they send.
Bill Gates is seeking asking that this be considered a DOS attack, and approperate criminal charges be pressed. Meanwhile this Saturday there will be a massive garage sale in Bellevue.
Well, that one ran on DOS, and crashed badly
It looks to me like the "abort retry or fail" option, which would sugest a media failure rather then a software crash... I can't tell from those pictures though.
I don't see a complex issue using DOS, microsoft or other, for a cash machine as dos is perfectly handy if all you need is a glorified terminal. While your typical DOS doesn't offer much in the way of security as far as accessing, modifying, or deleting files... it would be practicaly impossible without hooking up a keyboard, unlike windows with a virtual keyboard.
The only complex issue I see is the maintance of the filesystem, fat tends to be unreliable if you don't run chkdsk from time to time, assuming you actually use the disk for writing data that is.
Grey market is a term for goods bought in another country that may or may not carry the same warrenty as goods bought localy. I know in america for example it's very common to find goods bought over by people in Asia and sold over the counter at a discount.
You save a good deal of money... but sometimes the warrenty is no good. After all, part of the pricetag is warrenty service, and they are not paying for people all over the globe to service your goods. My experence with this is primarly cameras rather then laptops.
It is something to take into account when buying goods overseas.
Do You intend to use this equipment to:
Develop Nuclear Chemical or Biological weapons? Y [] N []
Do you intend to use this equipment to develop ballistic technologies? Y [] N []
I believe these are legit questions regarding the export of encryption technologies. I believe these laws are in part due WWII regulations on encryption... which makes a fair amount of sence as it was war time after all... and we in America grow attached to our laws... or rather they just stay on the books just in case we need them again.
There are also laws regarding encrypting information for export outside the US. You can encrypt the bible for example and send it to Castro, but you can't encrypt information regarding nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons for export to a Canadian for example without a license.
Would anyone actually check those boxes??
If you were a legit researcher in the production of weapons technology for example, then you would check these boxes. You may also get a license to export encryption technology. http://www.bxa.doc.gov/
This is not to say you can't lie about the subject, get a laptop, encrypt top secret documents, export them, and use them in a way that contrasts US interests. What I am saying is there is a legit logical reason for these questions... and if yes, a procedure they must follow for sale of products to people who plan to develop weapons technolgies on foreign soil.
While this doesn't apply to you directly, as you are UK... let me tell you about my experence taking PCs cross the Canadian border.
Officer: Do you plan to leave anything in Canada
Me: A computer and some beer
Officer: What kinda of computer
me: ummmm.... Asus a7v400 (showing the manual which was on the dash)
Officer: (short pause) you know beer can't be a gift, it's only for personal use
me: umm... I planed to share it
Officer: You said you were going to leave it, i'm just telling you it can't be a gift, OK! go ahead
As usual, I was expecting to have to pay some form of duty on this pc, after all it's fair, reasonable, and the law. It's not like I didn't declair it, after all what else would you call a custom build PC with an asus motherboard. But hey, they didn't want to charge me duty on it, that's just spiffy.
I think there are people out there who still believe that nasa spend millions / billions of dollars to develop a pen that would work in outerspace. http://www.spacepen.com/usa/index2.htm
p en.asp
According to this site
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/space
there was a pen developed by Fisher, and sold 400 to nasa in the late 60s at a cost of $2.95 a piece. Also according to the site, over one million was spent by Fisher for development.
Now... i've heard references over the years regarding this pen, mostly jokes how the former Soviet Union's space program saved money by using pencils, and even as an illistration for NASAs over spending. The figure seems to range between 1 million all way to 12 billion in some cases. But regardless of whether Nasa actually spent money to develop this technology or not, it is still perceived by many to be a fact and not just an urban legend.
You know there are many benefits to running something proprietary
This is security through obscurity. While this can work in some cases, i'm not going to touch the topic of benifits vs harm.
I wasn't even thinking about the benifits of running something proprietory... I was thinking of the benifits of something designed to act like a terminal and not have the ability to access any information via the touch screen interface like the freaking start menu.
I think one of the major benifits of the vintage cash machine isn't so much the fact that it's secure because it's obsolete... but the simple fact that they didn't boot up via a re-writable media whether it be disc drive or even flash roms. A software upgrade for such a device running on roms/proms/eproms requires physical access.
I don't feel it's about keepign it obscure, it's about not permiting you to make changes in it's operation via a touch screen interface, nor have the ability to save changes that would affect the way it operates.
I doubt it's the employee that just made up that policy. I'm sure that someone in the bank already thought of the cloning issues and that is why it their policy forbids the returning of lost cards.
Really? I lost my card once and my bank was nice enough to phone me up and say someone returned it.
Exactly _how_ would you go around hacking this ATM? OK, you can open windows and possibly run simply batch files. Does Windows XP have a built in assembler or other language that can be programmed to control the cash dispenser? Have you any other way to introduce the code you'd need to take control of the devices? Someone mentioned smartcard readers, but _exactly_ how do you introduce a smartcard via a touch screen? Has anyone _ever_ demonstrated an exploit on WinXP that is done by typing printable text into the regular user interface?
Why would you need to program the cash dispenser? Assuming the cash dispenser is just a serial device... just use hyperterminal or "echo whatever comX:" / "copy con: comX"" If you need anything beyond what the keyboard provides use the alt code, three digit for ascii, 4-5 digits for unicode.
Assuming we're talking about a printer like the HP LJ II or something similar....
i.e. echo [alt]012[alt] prn: should send a ctrl-l to the printer, cause it to spew out a page. You could just use ctrl-l under command.com
Useful command if for example you are running dos apps with a standard printer laser / ink jet, but the software doesn't issue a form feed to eject what you printed.
if the cash dispenser itself was controlled by simple command-line programs, it would be easy. Start | Run program | "c:\bin\gimmecash 1000". But somehow I don't think so...
It might very well be as simple as
Start | Run | echo 20 com1:
In theory you could even put something like this in the startup script to spew out money everytime the thing crashes and reboots. I don't know the protocals their despencers use...likely is not going to be 20 = 20 dollars... but it wouldn't shock me if it were under a few keystrokes.
True, except that modern ATMs will have biometrics (finger scanners and whatnot), plus that printer thingy that gives your receipt, then there's the monitor, maybe some sort of check scanner for inputting money, a dispenser for giving cash, and viola, you have attached devices which need drivers.
I'll agree the modern ATM will have all these things... but just because you have devices doesn't mean you need drivers in a the modular sense. There was a time when we hardcoded applications to specific devices, like printers and scanners for example.
1. finger scanners
This is true, but it's not like the ATM it self actually stores the database of account numbers vs fingerscanner... I would imagine that this is stored in your bank records. Get scan, send data to bank... if scan = record permit transation
2. printer thingy that gives your receipt
I believe that your typical cash machine printer only prints in one font, on terminal paper. There are others who use impact, but this isn't a complex operation
3. there's the monitor
I'm rather old school in my attitde tward display, I still think a bank terminal display being a glorified typewriter
4. check scanner for inputting money
I believe you are talking about OCR... Magnetic ink bank account numbers are easy enough to read.. human print is slightly harder. I'll have to do some research and see what sorta system the post office does to peform OCR on hand printed postal codes. But again... this logic doesn't even have to happen at the cach machine. Scanner that gets triggered and send a bitmap to the bank in question, relays back to the bank the amount it read.
5. dispenser for giving cash
Again, not a complex operation. communicate to the dispencer which bill to spit out of the machine
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All but biometrics and check scanners were operations the vintage cash machine peformed, without a standardized platform. Keep in mind that the actual verification process will still be peformed by the bank it self. I will continue to think of cash machines as glorified terminals. They gather data and communicate it to a remote location, remote location sends back information, and it displays, prints, and sometimes spews or accepts money.
1. With his contact info and where to send his card you could have gone on an internet spending spree.
Yes, I understand this fully. I assumed the guy was on vacation in washington from Alaska. As it turns out he was as he was listed in the phonebook
2. You could have cloned the card, if he continues using it you could at sometime in the future go on a fraudulent spending spree.
Sure I COULD have, but would a person cloning a card phone the damn bank from their home phone and be willing to share their contact info. If I wanted to go on a spending spree, I wouldn't have phoned the damn bank in the first place.
3. You could have cloned it in this situation too.
Sure I COULD have... but do you really think the employees are smart enough to think of this? Most of the ones I talk to are unaware you can make a copy. Do you think it's any complex issue activating a card that you thought was lost / stolen? It's painfuly easy, it's just a phonecall away.
Often times I find purses at Costco... left outside in the shopping cards. I make a good honest effort to find the owners in a timely fasion. Doesn't always work, and often times they call in their credit cards stolen, but fortunatly it's not a problem re-activating them.
Where is all the FUD about that??
There are those of us who would experence the same amount of FUD if it was running linux, if it was in single user with some form of access, and if there was a easy way to access a virtual keyboard and enter in data, and if all the useful utilities were already on this machine pre-compiled ready to be used.
It won't be long before we'll start to see credit cards employing smart card technology. In that event, they can store information above and beyond what a mag strip can store.
Then, you can indeed have a bit of data on your card. Whether or not it's possible to crash a machine with just the info on a mag stripe is beyond me presently. It wouldn't shock me if for example the cash machine before taking the time to verify the card peformed a checksum on the last 4 digits. If value = 0 and if it results in a divde by zero, i imagine it's possible to crash a machine with a card.
In fact... if a badly read card is the reason why these machines are crashing.
ATMs not connected to the Internet and without keyboard are pretty much unhackable unless you can pry open the case and attach a keyboard and/or wireless connection.
"On Screen Keyboard"
Any questions?
Bottom line is that some one needs to make a new ATM solution that works, propably on an open source platform (is that secure enough, you tell me), and most impotrant is ...IT WORKS....
Platform? One of the nice things about vintage cash machines was the fact that the software was written in assembly. Let's face it, all a bank machine is is just a glorified terminal. It has no need to store information, no need to access disks, mount devices, nor access a network outside of it's banking protocal. There is no need for it to accept new software other then perhaps firmware update from time to time, nor the ability to run background processes. Doesn't need to do cron events or anything above and beyond take card, peform action on account, say thank you.