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Exposing chinks in the ATM

Facility to change PIN numbers frequently, including using online access, will be critical to ensure that the integrity of the system is maintained, says k. Manikandan.

It was a perfect combination of technology and criminal intent. A small rectangular plastic card and a few punches on the electronic touch-pads and cash just kept flowing out of the vault. When an MBA graduate hacked into a city ATM using a counterfeit card to mop up several lakhs of cash, the city woke up to the first hi-tech crime involving the `round-the-clock' cash counters. Authorities and police are still studying the modus operandi closely and the possibilities of preventing such fraudulent operations.

The ATM is a symbol of convenience, of cash on tap. However, it has some chinks in the armour, revealed by the recent theft of cash by a youth in his early twenties.

The thief, with an MBA degree, hacked into an ATM facility apparently with little difficulty. His visits at odd hours at the same facility proved to be his undoing, when the watchman pulled down the shutter and called the police. His subsequent arrest only raised more questions than answering them, as the penetration of an electronic system was not fully explained.

Being the first reported incident of its kind, the police were clueless and had to rope in experts to investigate the manner in which the youth had committed the crime, described by bank authorities as a `fraud using counterfeit cards'. Sleuths were taken in by surprise during their investigations. All he had at hand was a laptop to chat with his contacts in the U.S., from whom he got the know-how of creating the cards and more importantly, the magnetic stripes that actually gave him the access to the ATMs.

Usually, the counterfeit cards were smuggled from across the country. But now the same are reportedly available here now. With electronic gadgets flooding the grey market, the operators have little trouble locating decoders to design the crucial bar codes. "Copying" of data from individual cards using readers is another device used by criminals, who then create a duplicate card with identical characteristics, especially of credit cards. Facility to change PIN numbers frequently, including using online access, will be critical to ensure that the integrity of the system is maintained.

In the latest incident in the city, it was not the depositors' accounts that were hacked into, going by the version of the bank authorities. Only those accounts of issuers from abroad had been affected. The incident was not classified as a `cyber crime' as the culprit had used cyber technology as only a medium and not `manipulated the medium itself'.

Officials in the banks could not spell out the safeguards to prevent ATM-related frauds and the foolproof mechanisms that can be installed there. A team of experts in Mumbai is in charge of any investigation, they say. ATM card holders realise the fraud the moment they browse through their account during their routine visits to the facility and even bank authorities are at a loss to explain and trace the exact ATM where the theft took place, as a resident of suburban Velachery found out.

A salary account holder in an ATM at Adyar says a statement on June 25 recorded that Rs. 5,000 had been withdrawn on June 19, though he had not done so. When he took up the issue with the authorities and tried to explain that he had not made the withdrawal, he was told that the cash was drawn from an ATM at Worli in Mumbai. When he explained that he was in Bangalore on June 19, he was later told that the cash was drawn from an ATM in Adyar and still later informed that the withdrawal had been done in Velachery.

When he tried to explain to bank authorities, citing earlier instances of robbery at ATMs, that images of those visiting ATMs could be retrieved using hidden cameras that record transactions, staff replied the facility was not available in their bank. Exasperated, he terminated his ATM facility and settled for a regular account.

In February, three persons who kidnapped a businessman and a studio shop owner and used their ATM cards to remove cash from machines on Anna Salai and Adyar, landed in the police net, thanks to the images captured by cameras as they removed cash.

ATMs are here to stay, and in the days to come, "all-in-one" cash machines that cater for all bank and credit card customers are likely to come in, as service levels improve. The key to their success will depend on the network managers and security personnel staying ahead of the criminals, who are constantly trying to outsmart them.

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