Card skimmers are so last year. There鈥檚 been a huge rise in scammers directly hacking into cash machines to make them spit out money, whilst the use of card skimmers 鈥� small scanners that capture card details as someone uses an ATM, is in decline.
Malware scams and so-called logical attacks, where computers are plugged into a cash dispenser to command it to give up its loot, have risen by 230 per cent between 2016 and 2017, according to the European Association for Secure Transactions, which tracks ATM crime. This corresponded to around 鈧�1.52 million being lost this way last year. Card skimming incidents .
Robbing individual accounts is also on the decline, and the number of physical attacks against cash machines, including trying to blow them out of walls, has risen. Overall fraud attacks on聽ATMs聽in western Europe have dropped 11 per cent.
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The increasing implementation of chip and PIN on European cash cards is to blame for the decrease in card skimming crimes, says Lachlan Gunn, executive director of EAST. 鈥淥rganised criminals may be switching to malware and logical attacks to cash-out at ATMs instead,鈥� he says.
Different versions of ATM malware, including one called Cutlet Maker, which overrides the ATM operating system and sends instructions to empty the machine鈥檚 cash reserves, have been offered on sale on the dark web for as little as $5,000.
There may be another explanation, though. The number of card skimming incidents dropped significantly in July 2017, around the same time as Alexandru Sovu, who manufactured card skimmer circuit boards, was arrested by British police. 鈥淥nce you destroy the market, you destroy the crime,鈥� says Nick Webber of CELT Limited, a digital forensic analysis consultancy.
Criminal gangs who focused on installing card skimmers on ATMs are believed to have refocused their efforts on the United States, where chip and PIN adoption is less widespread.
Still, you shouldn鈥檛 worry about getting cash from an ATM, as if your money is stolen, the bank should refund it, says Webber. 鈥淚t鈥檚 their payment network that鈥檚 been compromised,鈥� he says.
Read more: Five ways to rob a bank using the internet
