ATM fraud: some interesting facts

Brian Krebs, who blogs at Krebs On Security, has a few posts this year that shed fascinating light on the problem of fraud at automated teller machines (ATM's). In one post, he says:

Last week, I had a chance to chat with Rick Doten, chief scientist at Lockheed Martin’s Center for Cyber Security Innovation. Doten has built an impressive slide deck on ATM fraud attacks, and pictured below are some of the more interesting images he uses in his presentations.

According to Doten, the U.S. Secret Service estimates that annual losses from ATM fraud totaled about $1 billion in 2008, or about $350,000 each day. Card skimming, where the fraudster affixes a bogus card reader on top of the real reader, accounts for more than 80 percent of ATM fraud, Doten said.

(Bold print is my emphasis.)

Here are some images from Mr. Krebs' blog of ATM card 'skimming' devices (which read the magnetic strip on the back of the card and store the details, or forward them over a cellphone to the thief's location) and other fraudulent tools.

Left: fake keyboard to capture PIN codes.
Right: Card skimming device.
Both devices are used together to capture users' account access information.

There are many more photographs, and much more useful information, in Mr. Krebs' articles. See here, here, here and here for some very interesting (and worrying) reading!

I think we owe Mr. Krebs a debt of gratitude for educating us about the risks of using ATM's. Certainly, after looking through those photographs, I now find myself examining every ATM with a very skeptical eye. If something doesn't look right, rest assured I won't be using it!

Peter