Visiting hacker foils fraudlent ATM
Scammers at the Riviera Hotel Casino clearly failed to check the event
calendar when the installed a fake cashpoint - and were duly shut down
by eagle-eyed hackers attending the DefCon convention.
As reported over on
Wired,
the ATM - which was placed in the hotel's conference centre where the
DefCon convention was taking place - appeared to be a standard
stand-alone unit, sat outside of the range of surveillance cameras.
Sadly for anyone that needed a quick buck or two to feed into the slot
machines, the device hid a card skimmer - designed to record the
account details and PIN of any card inserted.
It isn't known how long the machine was in place, nor who installed it
- but it is known that hacker and CEO of Aries Security Brian Markus is
responsible for getting it removed. Having spotted that the smoked
glass on the front of the unit - which usually hides a small camera
positioned to record the face of anyone using the machine for fraud
prevention purposes - looked "
funny",
he shone a torch at the machine to peek behind the panel. Rather than
the expected camera, Markus saw a PC connected to the machine's innards
- and recording card information.
Although the ATM was carefully positioned to avoid hotel security
cameras, whoever put the device in place clearly had a sense of irony
as it was placed directly outside the hotel's security office - with
none of the security employees any the wiser that something was amiss
until Markus pointed out his suspicions.
The ATM has since been removed by hotel security staff, and an
investigation is taking place to discover exactly how long the skimmer
was in place - and hopefully find those responsible.