Intellectual Property Law

Malicious ATM Catches Hackers

By Kim Zetter

LAS VEGAS — There’s no honor among thieves, nor apparently among hackers.

A malicious ATM kiosk was positioned in the conference center of the Riviera Hotel Casino capturing data from an unknown number of hackers attending the DefCon hacker conference before someone noticed something suspicious about the kiosk.

An organizer for the conference said security authorities seized the device. It’s not known how long the ATM was in the hotel or whether it was placed there by a DefCon attendee to catch his fellow hackers or simply by an outside criminal group trying to target conference attendees.

Witnesses say the kiosk was well-placed to avoid surveillance cameras.

“In any casino anything that is considered that high value has a camera,” said Brian Markus, CEO of Aries Security who saw the machine, “and they placed it where there were no [hotel] cameras visibly watching that exact spot where the ATM was.”

Markus said it was clear to him the ATM was fake when he looked at the smoked glass on the front of the machine and noticed something funny about it. When he beamed a flashlight through the glass, instead of seeing a camera behind it, he saw the PC that was set up to siphon card data.

The ATM had been placed right outside the hotel’s security office.

Photo of “non-malicious” ATM at the Riviera Hotel and Casino by Andrea Matwyshyn

Full post as published by Threat Level on August 02, 2009 (boomark / email).