Researcher Managed to Hack ATMs Using His Phone’s NFC & Android App

ATMs play a very vital role in everyone’s life, there are many people who use ATMs to withdraw cash directly. However, the threat actors are now targetting the ATMs to implement their organized plan.

According to Joseph Rodriguez, a very serious flaw has been detected by a cybersecurity expert of the IOActive in the NFC system of ATMs, and in the POS.

These ATM network attacks appear with high risk, in this kind of ATM attack, the threat actors needed to access the USB port physically, and this action is quite risky for the threat actors to perform especially in daylight.

Apart from all these things, the researchers claimed that this kind of attack generally damages some part of the ATMs, but the threat actors prefer this method of attack because breaking into a bank directly, then trying to find different ways to reach out to the ATM is more dangerous and these methods do require more skills too.

Researcher hacked ATMs using phone’s NFC and an Android app

Using the phone’s NFC and Android app is a more hassle-free method for the threat actors to perform such attacks. After investigating the whole attack, Rodriguez came to know that just using a proprietary Android application along with that a smartphone with an NFC module, will easily help someone to exhibit installing some sort of ransomware on these devices.

Not only this but the expert also affirmed that if one can connect an ATM computer, then, in that case, they can easily withdraw money with an easy click of your smartphone. 

It’s been stated in the Wired report that this kind of attack not only exploits ATMs but also exploits other vending machines in many different ways such as obtaining payment card information, putting malware, and even poisoning an ATM.

During an investigation, Rodriguez asserted that he has found an additional bug along with this hack, and he also claimed that it has been cleared that the “jackpotting” hack only works in a combination with some other additional bug.

This attack can be used in many ways, that’s why, the threat actors can easily chain the attack and also send a unique payload to an ATM’s computer, doing this will help them to get a jackpot of the ATM cash-out, just by tapping your phone.

After knowing all about this flaw, it’s quite obvious that this kind of flaw is serious, especially if we consider that POS is now the preferred payment system in every shop, restaurant, shopping center, and many more.

However, Rodriguez has not yet disclosed any key details regarding this flaw because of the nondisclosure agreements with the ATM vendors. 

But this attack is continuously affecting a wide range of modern machines, therefore Rodriguez decides to disclose some of the technical details in the upcoming weeks.

Also Read: ATM Penetration Testing and Methods