Fraudsters stole card data through fake ATMs

Employees of the "K" department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, specializing in crimes in the IT sphere, caught a gang of scammers who installed fake ATMs. Three residents of Udmurtia bought decommissioned ATMs, updated their filling and placed them in crowded places in Moscow, the Moscow region and Sochi. Externally, the devices were designed like ordinary ATMs, only belonging to actually non-existent banks.

Instead of issuing money, ATMs read information from the card’s magnetic tape and pin code, after which they reported an error and returned the card to the owner. Naturally, the data from the card was transferred to a remote server. Thus, attackers got the opportunity to make a duplicate card and withdraw money from it in a real ATM.

Until information is disclosed on whether the villains managed to steal money in this way. It is only known that they are detained, and counterfeit ATMs are dismantled. It is also reported that information from more than a thousand bank cards was found in the seized ATMs.

I would like to advise you to be vigilant and bypass suspicious ATMs by the side - and this will not always help. As I wrote not so long ago, “invisible” skimmers have already appeared that can read information from the card, while freely placing them directly in the slots of the card reader. So, for the convenience of cashless payments you have to pay with security.