According to research by Positive Technologies, it only takes an attacker between 10 and 20 minutes to take possession of an ATM and steal our money
More and more often, cyber criminals are targeting ATMs. So when we go to withdraw money or make a transaction from an ATM, we need to be careful not to give away information to hackers and allow them to steal our money.
According to research done by Positive Technologies, a company active in the field of banking security solutions,
the majority of ATMs in our cities today are hackable in just 20 minutes. According to the tes,t 85% of bank ATMs can be subject to one or more ATM malware while all are sabotaged with skimmers and other manual techniques that malicious people can apply to an ATM. With the first technique, hackers can tamper with the ATM itself and thus steal the money a user goes to withdraw, while with skimmers, cyber criminals can clone our credit cards.
How an ATM is tampered with by hackers
According to various tests by Positive Technologies, the fastest technique to sabotage an ATM is the one called Black Box. Tampering with an ATM using this technique takes only 10 to 20 minutes. Luckily for us, the Black Box is a problem that concerns banks more than individual users. In such an attack a hacker opens the ATM case and makes a hole in it to reach the cable that connects the ATM computer to the ATM safe. Cyber criminals then connect a custom-made tool, called a Black Box, which tricks the ATM into dispensing cash on demand. Basically, without inserting a valid card, the machine dispenses money. Don't think about operations to be done with bulky instruments. The hole made is very small, just enough to pass the black box that is often little bigger than an electric wire. According to Positive Technologies, 70% of ATMs can be tampered with in this way.