Items tagged with atm
Hitting a jackpot on a slot machine is usually a cause for celebration, at least for the person receiving the windfall of cash. Jackpotting an ATM, however, is highly illegal and can land a person in prison. Case in point, the United States Department of Justice announced it has arrested and charged two men, Alex Alberto Fajin-Diaz and Argenys Rodriguez, with bank fraud stemming from an alleged ATM jackpotting scheme. In case you have never heard of the term, jackpotting an ATM involves using malware and a direct physical connection to extract large amounts of cash very quickly, usually draining the ATM of every bill inside. The practice of jackpotting has been prevalent at banking institutions...
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ATMs can be a blessing and a curse to financial institutions. On the one hand, they can process financial transactions quickly, allowing the machines to serve more people over a span of time than a human teller. However, ATMs are often the target of hackers, many using skimmers to obtain debit card numbers for later nefarious spending sprees. Now, the Secret Service is warning that an existing type of ATM attack, jackpotting, is finally beginning to make its way to the United States. Jackpotting has been prevalent at banking institutions across Europe and Asia, but not so much in the U.S. It involves using malware and a direct physical connection to an ATM to force it to shoot out large sums...
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California fancies itself a fairly progressive state, so it wouldn't be all that shocking if Bitcoin ATMs littered the length of the location of the west coast within the next few years. For now, however, there are just two and they exist in the Los Angeles area. They're managed by ExpressCoin, a Bitcoin payment processor based out of Santa Monica. You can find one of them at 5825 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood and the other at 701 Lincoln Blvd. in Venice. Both ATMs are worth $15,000 and were built by Robocoin out of Las Vegas. Image Source: US Finance Post Bitcoin ATMs are a rare breed at this early stage, though gaining momentum. According to Coin ATM Radar, there are only 132 Bitcoin ATMs in...
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After so much waiting, it's almost hard to believe that the day of XP's death is upon us. At this point, if you're still running Windows XP, you're either incredibly loyal to the OS, or don't surf the Internet too much. Given the fact that this April 8th date has been known about since 2009, it's truly amazing that it's still so widely used. Net Applications' most recent reports pits XP use at 30%. That's 30% of all Web surfers, across all OSes. Even more incredible might be the fact that the OS is used on over 80% of the world's ATMs. This is a subject we've covered time and time again. And again. But the fact of the matter is, if Windows XP is dead, as far as Microsoft's concerned, that...
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We've been talking about the demise of Windows XP for what seems like forever, but at the turn of the new year, a new reality came to face: Most of the world's ATMs are still running the OS. Given the fact that Windows XP's been on life-support for some time, it's unbelievable that so many banks still haven't updated their ATMs - it's totally unnecessary. Banks still running Windows XP in their ATMs have the benefit of being able to get special support contracts with Microsoft, and while the Redmond company is keeping mum on the actual costs, they're going to be much more than a standard contract. With this, the lagging behavior of these banks is even sillier, since instead of paying Microsoft...
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The Bitcoin craze is about to get a whole lot crazier once Robocoin starts installing ATMs in the U.S. that support the virtual currency. Robocoin said it's planning to install Bitcoin ATMs in Seattle, Washington and Austin, Texas. These kiosks will function like ordinary ATMs except they'll have scanners than can read driver's licenses, passports, and other government-issued IDs to confirm a user's identity. Bitcoin ATMs will allow users to turn Bitcoin currency into cold, hard cash. Users will also be able to deposit cash to buy Bitcoins by transferring funds to or from a virtual wallet on their smartphone devices, Reuters reports. While these will be the first Bitcoin-supported ATMs in the...
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When at a bank machine, making a deposit or taking cash out, it's easy to overlook the finer details of what's going on in the background. Such as, what operating system it's running. Unless you walked up to a machine that had a blue-screen-of-death present, would you have guessed that it was running Windows? According to statistics, there's a 95% chance that it is. What's more, it's almost certain that it's Windows XP. As we've talked much about here, the support deadline for Windows XP is nearing fast, still set for April 8th, 2014. For end-users, this is an obvious problem - no one likes using an unsupported OS. And while Microsoft is doing a good deed in extending anti-malware support for...
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There are no boundaries to technology, which continues to reach into all facets of our daily regimen. The world will look and function decidedly different in 10 years compared to today, and while we don't know exactly what life will be like, we know that banking at ATMs is one area that will see plenty of change. Diebold, a security firm out of Ohio, is working on several next generation ATM technologies. Tomorrow's ATMs will sport tablet-like touchscreens, only unlike your iPad or Nexus 7, it will spit out money (assuming you have some in your bank account). It might also use facial recognition as an added measure of security, so if your card and PIN are lost and/or stolen, the perpertrator...
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Ah, the digital world. Sometimes, it's easy to realize we're living in it. Things like digital boarding passes and cars that drive themselves are prime examples. But other times, we're wondering what the hold-up is. Now, in the banking world, Wells Fargo is finally answering the call on an issue that seems super obvious. The company announced today that in addition to its popular email or e-receipt option, it is introducing text receipts at its more than 12,000 ATMs across the country. This new service is available to all Wells Fargo Online or Mobile Banking customers who provide their mobile phone number. As the first bank to offer e-receipts to its customers at its ATMs in June 2010, Wells...
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In need of extra cash? Who isn't, right? If you're a smart hacker, you may be able to make a small fortune by simply tricking an ATM or two into spitting out money for you. We know that sounds crazy, and it certainly is, but it's true nonetheless. At the annual Black Hat conference -- where hackers and security experts gather to make public certain loopholes in order to encourage companies to fix them -- Barnaby Jack was able to demonstrate how he could trick an ATM into spitting out all of its cash, and more. The hacker spent two full years perfecting the ruse, which applied to the ATMs found often in front of convenience stores. The goal was to find a way to take control of the ATM by "exploiting...
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