DMP White Paper: ATM Jackpotting is on the Rise

Last month, the U.S. Secret Service began warning banks across the country about a hacking scheme that lets thieves steal an ATM’s money – not some, but all of it! In January alone, thieves took more than $1 million with ATM attacks ranging from the Pacific Northwest to the Gulf Coast to New England.

During previous attacks, fraudsters have dressed as ATM technicians and easily accessed the ATMs’ hoods using a generic key. Inside the hood is the central processing unit (CPU) — the brains behind the machine that controls the electronics. Once inside, the bogus techs load jackpotting malware onto the CPU, causing the machine to dispense its cash. Like a slot machine dispensing a jackpot, the ATM is compromised to spit out cash at a furious rate of 40 bills every 23 seconds!

It’s a wake-up call, explains Scott Couch, president of STS Group headquartered in Madison, Alabama. “Up until now, the security focus has been on the cash in the lower level of the ATM. But to beat this, we’ve got to tighten our security on that top compartment.”

Since Couch started STS Group in 2008, his business has specialized in protecting financial institutions across the Southeast with DMP products — in this case, he has already installed DMP’s 7070 Thinline LCD Keypad™ in several of his clients’ ATMs.

“We’ve created a kit that can be adapted to any of our customers’ existing alarm systems to secure the hood area of the ATM,” he says. “With jackpotting, it’s going to take installing a physical alarm, and DMP’s keypad lets us do just that.”

To read more about this white paper, please click here. Feel free to browse our other White Paper Topics below:

Visit buy.DMP.com to place an order 24 hours a day.