Citibank ATM PIN Heist Mystery Continues


For the last few months, the FBI have been investigating a breach of Citibank’s ATM transaction processing servers. We’ve seen credit card numbers get stolen before, but these compromised servers were used to collect card numbers and PINs as transactions took place. The group responsible hired people to write new cards and use them to make ATM withdrawals. The card makers would keep a percentage and launder the rest. This is just a very small part of story and the extent of the breach isn’t fully realised yet. Threat Level’s [Kevin Poulson] has the whole story on this disturbing situation.

[photo: Bryan Derballa]

12 thoughts on “Citibank ATM PIN Heist Mystery Continues

  1. I usually just read Hack a Day – and love it. But lately I’ve been seeing a decline in quality with posts like this leaking in. So I feel I have to say that I don’t think these kind of articles belong on Hack a Day.. at all. There are plenty of other blogs for that (slashdot, etc). Please let Hack a Day remain pure.

  2. this is a pretty good article on this re-direct. not bad material at all for h-a-d. just reminds those of us in the physical and/or information security world that it’s not just a jungle out there. it’s a effin warzone

    all in all i like the new format, sure some is flaky, but then again not all that glitters is gold. to be honest, all these naysayers remind me of a story a former professor once told me about when my campus finally got bus services to run loops to the parking lots. students were up in arms about having to park so far away as to ride a bus and my professor asked the then president of the university about it. he replied that the great thing about colleges is that in four years no one will remember a time before the buses.

    keep your head up hackaday, and keep on keeping on cause the attention span of the web is a few months at most.

  3. Obligatory reminder to those that don’t like the complainers:

    “hack a day serves up a fresh hack each day, every day from around the web and a special how-to hack each week.”

  4. I bank with CitiBank, and recently received a notice on ATM safety. They offered some wise advise, including that I “cover the keypad when entering my pin,” and “be aware of your surroundings when using an ATM machine.”

    I feel safer already.

  5. I came to hackaday for the daily hack in the first place (obviously ?), but I don’t think the articles quality is degrading, it’s just less interesting to people like us. As long as there is a “daily” category (thanks for pointing this out, I didn’t know it existed until now), I don’t mind and I don’t see why anyone would.

  6. That reminds me of a movie a long time ago where this guy found he could pick up signals (data) with his car radio tuned to a certain frequency and of course within vicinity of an ATM. He then figured out a way to capture the data and make cards. Anyone remember this movie or what it was called?

Leave a Reply to KenCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.