ATMs Compromised, $45M Taken 196
An anonymous reader sends this news from the Associated Press:
"A worldwide gang of criminals stole a total of $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said Thursday. ... Here’s how it worked: Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on prepaid-debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card with a magnetic stripe — an old hotel key card or an expired credit card worked fine as long as it carried the account data and correct access codes."
Re:I wonder how much was skimmed by the bag men (Score:5, Informative)
They did "discuss"
Mr. Lajud-Peña fled the United States just as the authorities were starting to make arrests of members of his crew, the law enforcement official said.
On April 27, according to news reports from the Dominican Republic, two hooded gunmen stormed a house where he was playing dominoes and began shooting. A manila envelope containing about $100,000 in cash remained untouched.
Re:Why wouldn't they work? (Score:5, Informative)
Why wouldn't an Old Hotel card with a mag stripe work if it had the info the reader was expecting? I mean it's interesting that it worked, but why is that of note?
Because a lot of people don't understand that a mag strip is a mag strip, regardless of what piece of plastic it's connected to. There's an opportunity here to talk about how some types of chipped cards can prevent this type of easy duplication, but they missed it.
Re: Surely this sort of thing is better than Bitco (Score:3, Informative)
Except that you don't need a bank just to keep your money in with bitcoin.
The money is stored in the transactions that are in the block chain and replicated everywhere.
You just need to store the private key that signed those transactions to be able to "spend" that money.
You don't need a bank, you just need to be able to store a few hundred bytes of data to prove the bitcoins are yours.
Re:Quid Pro Quo (Score:4, Informative)
I only wish these hoods got away with about $4.5B instead of a paltry $45M.
In that case they'd be playing golf with the president instead of being prosecuted. Their problem was thinking small.
Re:I wonder how much was skimmed by the bag men (Score:2, Informative)
The prepaid debit card numbers had not be given out to customers, so only the banks are taking the loss. The cost will trickle down to us via higher fees, but the immediate affect is on the banks only.
That was summarized by an idiot. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nye/pr/2013/2013may09.html [justice.gov]
Over the course of approximately 10 hours, casher cells in 24 countries executed approximately 36,000 transactions worldwide and withdrew about $40 million from ATMs. From 3 p.m. on February 19 through 1:26 a.m. on February 20, the defendants and their co-conspirators withdrew approximately $2.4 million in nearly 3,000 ATM withdrawals in the New York City area.
2904 withdrawals, not ATMs. About 10 hours, not EXACTLY 10 hours.
Also, it's 8 persons with 12 accounts per person. [nytimes.com] All they needed to cover was about 30 ATMs.
Which comes out to about 20 minutes per ATM, meaning that each TEAM (i.e. at least one to withdraw the money, one to drive the car and keep lookout) had about 8 minutes to get from one ATM to the next.
Good critical thinking on your part though. Just too much noise in the signal.