ATMs Attempt To Halt Cyberattacks

Fraudsters are finding ATMs to be among the newest lures for bilking victims out of money.

As The Wall Street Journal reported, with one year under the belt of the move to EMV in the United States, the ATM has been under siege, as cyberthieves have targeted the machines, up threefold since 2014. Credit score firm FICO said that 2015 went down as the highest-ever tally of compromised machines, although it should be noted that FICO did not disclose actual numbers. Nonbank ATMs account for as much as 60 percent of fraud attempts in 2015, up from 39 percent in 2014.

Against that backdrop, ATM operators are facing a liability shift similar to the one that merchants were mandated last year. The ATM operators are on the hook for fraud that occurs even while a consumer uses a chip card. That effort has as its aim the blunting of ATM fraud known as skimming, where data is stolen and then used to make a counterfeit bank card and use the corresponding accounts. WSJ cited a stat from Tremont Capital Group which stated that thieves strike ATMs on the order of 1.5 million times, as measured by illicit cash stolen. Separately, Mastercard has said 40 percent of ATMs will be chip-ready by the end of the month, as noted by WSJ.