When a Skimmer Isn’t a Skimmer

I have a confession to make: ever since the first time I read about them online, I’ve been desperate to find an ATM skimmer in the wild. It’s the same kind of morbid curiosity that keeps us from turning away from a car accident, you don’t want to be witness to anyone getting hurt, but there’s still that desire to see the potential for danger up close. While admittedly my interest is largely selfish (I already know on which shelf I would display it), there would still be tangible benefits to the community should an ATM skimmer cross my path. …read more

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Spoof a Skimmer for Peace of Mind

It’s a sad commentary on the state of the world when it becomes a good practice to closely inspect the card reader on every ATM and gas pump for the presence of a skimmer. The trouble is, even physically yanking on the reader may not be enough, as more sophisticated skimmers now reside safely inside the device, sipping on the serial comms output of the reader and caching it for later pickup via Bluetooth. Devilishly clever stuff.

Luckily, there’s an app to detect these devices, and the prudent consumer might take solace when a quick scan of the area reveals …read more

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Europol busts global ATM skimmer network

Europol arrested four members of a global criminal network allegedly responsible for placing ATM skimmers around European cities and then cashing out on the other side of the world, the international law enforcement agency announced on Thursday. The arrests mark the end of a two-year investigation that spanned the entire European continent as well as South America and Asia. All four arrested men are Bulgarian nationals, Europol said. ATM skimmers are a common tool used by criminals to steal bank account information from unwitting ATM users. The devices are essentially man-in-the middle attacks that catch account information when people dip their cards. Skimmers are often invisible to the eye and extremely easy to make and use. “Years ago it took someone with knowledge and skills to build a credit card skimmer,” Nate Seidle, CEO of the open source electronics firm SparkFun, explained earlier this year. “Now criminals are buying these off the […]

The post Europol busts global ATM skimmer network appeared first on Cyberscoop.

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Seek Out Scammers With Skimmer Scanner

Last week we reported on some work that Sparkfun had done in reverse engineering a type of hardware card skimmer found installed in gasoline pumps incorporating card payment hardware. The device in question was a man-in-the-middle attack, a PIC microcontroller programmed to listen to the serial communications between card reader and pump computer, and then store the result in an EEPROM.

The devices featured a Bluetooth module through which the crooks could harvest the card details remotely, and this in turn provides a handy way to identify them in the wild. If you find a Bluetooth connection at the pump …read more

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Seriously, Is It That Easy To Skim Cards?

We’ve all heard of card skimmers, nefarious devices that steal the identity of credit and debit cards, attached to ATMs and other machines in which unsuspecting consumers use them. Often they have relied on physical extraction of data from the card itself, such as by inserting a magnetic stripe reader in a fake ATM fascia, or by using a hidden camera to catch a picture of both card and user PIN entry.

The folks at Sparkfun write about an approach they received from a law enforcement agency bearing a selection of card skimmer devices that had been installed in gasoline …read more

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Seriously, Is It That Easy To Skim Cards?

We’ve all heard of card skimmers, nefarious devices that steal the identity of credit and debit cards, attached to ATMs and other machines in which unsuspecting consumers use them. Often they have relied on physical extraction of data from the card itself, such as by inserting a magnetic stripe reader in a fake ATM fascia, or by using a hidden camera to catch a picture of both card and user PIN entry.

The folks at Sparkfun write about an approach they received from a law enforcement agency bearing a selection of card skimmer devices that had been installed in gasoline …read more

Continue reading Seriously, Is It That Easy To Skim Cards?