Presenting the Latest in ATM Scam Gear: The SMS-Sending Card Skimmer

NYC is full of ATMs. It’s one of the great things about living in this city—you’re never more than a block or two away from cash. But a large, large percentage of NYC’s ATMs are cut-rate bodega models that look like your card could catch something nasty from them once dipped. Helping spread the nasty is this, the newest development in ATM skimmers, with SMS capability. So now, if he’s got $8,500 to drop on the top of the line scam gear, the asshole who just jacked your card number and PIN doesn’t even have to come back to the scene of the crime to retrieve it. The folks at Zero Day uncovered a bunch of promotional material for the SMS-capable skimmer, which can send up to 1,856 coded numbers via a standard GSM SIM card for 24 hours on a single charge. The skimmer replaces an ATM’s normal card reader, and is even painted with the exact same pigments and techniques used by the real manufacturer. When I logged on to my bank account online last year to find it had just been emptied by a series of huge withdrawals in Jordan (“Have you been to Jordan recently?” asked the bank fraud department innocently), maybe this was the enabler. [ZD Net]