ATM Vendor Halts Researcher’s Talk on Vulnerability

Barnaby Jack, a researcher with Juniper Networks, was to present a demonstration showing how he could “jackpot” a popular ATM brand by exploiting a vulnerability in its software.

Jack was scheduled to present his talk at the upcoming Black Hat security conference being held in Las Vegas at the end of July.

But on Monday evening, his employer released a statement saying it was canceling the talk due to the vendor’s intervention.

…

In the description of his talk on the conference web site, Jack wrote that, “The most prevalent attacks on Automated Teller Machines typically involve the use of card skimmers, or the physical theft of the machines themselves. Rarely do we see any targeted attacks on the underlying software. This presentation will retrace the steps I took to interface with, analyze, and find a vulnerability in a line of popular new model ATM’s. The presentation will explore both local and remote attack vectors, and finish with a live demonstration of an attack on an unmodified, stock ATM.”

Jack did not disclose the ATM brand or discuss whether the vulnerability was found in the ATM’s own software or in its underlying operating system. Diebold ATMs, one of the most popular brands, runs on a Windows operating system, as do some other brands of ATMs.

/with Bill Gates and crew protecting our ATMs with Windows, just thank God your bank accounts are insured by the FDIC up to $250,000