August 3rd, 2009
Fake ATM, skimmers found in Las Vegas hotels
A Google security researcher attending the Black Hat/DEFCON conferences in Las Vegas was victimized by a skimming device placed in an ATM at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.
Chris Paget, an RFID security expert who now works on Google’s security team, said he lost $200 to a rigged ATM that also claimed several other victims. Inexplicably, Paget said he got no help from hotel security or local police in Las Vegas when he reported the problem.
He used his Twitter account to warn about the dangers of using ATMs at the casinos in Las Vegas.
Paget’s tale follows the discovery of a fake ATM planted at the Riviera Hotel, the site of the DEFCON hacker event.
Wired’s Kim Zetter reports:
A malicious ATM kiosk was positioned in the conference center of the Riviera Hotel Casino capturing data from an unknown number of hackers attending the DefCon hacker conference before someone noticed something suspicious about the kiosk.
An organizer for the conference said security authorities seized the device. It’s not known how long the ATM was in the hotel or whether it was placed there by a DefCon attendee to catch his fellow hackers or simply by an outside criminal group trying to target conference attendees.
Witnesses say the kiosk was well-placed to avoid surveillance cameras.
The use of ATM skimmers in credit card fraud has exploded in recent years with rigged kiosks found at hundreds of locations throughout the U.S.
Ryan Naraine is a journalist and security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab. He manages Threatpost.com, a security news portal. Here is Ryan's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.
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