What is Raspberry Pi? How are Hackers using it to loot ATMs?

With the increase in technologies, cybercrimes are rising with the speed of light. Getting through someone laptop was old, now the cybercriminals are starting a new fight against banks by emptying their ATMs. They are not coming with a bag and looting all the money from ATMs while they have upgraded their weapon to malware, Raspberry Pi and a key from eBay.

The best-fit term for such cybercrimes is ‘Jackpotting’. The way the hackers are gambling with the ATMs is just crazy. There were other such cyber crimes like ‘Skimming’; in which the hackers were invading our privacy by copying the data from our ATM cards and our PINs to create cloned cards.

Did you know? Around Tens of millions of dollars are being looted each year that are happening under the same hacker attacks, ‘Jackpotting’. Places like Asia, Europe have already been attacked by Hackers, and the hacks are increasing in the U.S. Researchers say that around 100 various banks from 30 different countries have encountered such attacks since 2016.

How are the hackers getting into the ATMs?

A lot of planning, research, surveillance, malware and knowledge is happening at the backend. And, that is why the attacks are happening in a very sophisticated way.

The days when ATMs were loot with a gun or at night is gone. The new criminals are getting online and creating a fuss in the world.

The cybercriminals are way past with all the old methods; now, they have a new weapon Raspberry Pi.

What is an ATM? It is nothing but a massively old computer with software and drives that also have piles of money within them. The sad part is that the technology and the operating system used in such computers is not very powerful. Most of them can only run on Windows 7 and Windows XP, CAn you Imagine? The government and the system never thought about changing and upgrading them. And, now we are encountering the consequences of the old system fighting with crazy hackers with upgraded technology.

(We all know how easy it is to buy some malware from Dark Web and exploit an operating system.)

What places are these Hackers targetting?

The hackers are smart enough to trace the ATMs from maps in different areas and trace them. That is when they start with their research. They pick ATMs that are in high use with the crowd, and they pin their target there. They’re also targetting ATMs from places where there is no monitoring and inspecting done.

 They are scheduling their attacks as per the holidays and when the ATMs get loaded with money. Occasions are what they are targeting, and the days when most of us get our salaries. So, that we deposit the amount, and they loot it.

On what basis are the hackers buying their Malwares?

The better research one can do about the hardware of the targetted ATMs, the better malware he can grab from dar web and the particular key to open the ATMs. Some huge manufacturers have a label of their name; that makes it even easier to identify the ATM perfect fit malware.

How do they Install the Malware?

ATMs restrict to the keyboard and mouse for a connection, and that why they put the loaded malware into the Raspberry Pi and have an extra battery to make it run as a manageable unit. 

   The ATm gets convinced that Raspberry Pi is a keyboard because of the MAlware. The stored commands orders the ATM, and hence the ATM follows it.

What is Jackpot?

It is the way these Hackers are gambling with the ATMs. 

They know that it is how to make the ATM split out banknotes at a rate of 40 bills in around 20 seconds. So, that is how they are playing and getting ample banknotes printed. 

Other than these cybercrimes known to us, there are hundreds of thefts left unknown to the people. Studies say that a lot of ATM loots stays unreported. It is good that we are aware of terms like jackpotting skimming. The attacks that are happening in the cyber world to empty our money from ATMs. 

It is better if we start taking these things more seriously and think before we deposit our money. This problem can only come to a solution when the government and the system start working on the same page as hackers. We can not fight them with these traditional operating systems present in the ATMs. We would need to boost up our game and not let these hackers rob our money.

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