Gadgetory

On February 20th 2013 a payment processor called end stage known as something unusual debit cards are withdrawing thousands of dollars at a time far beyond the normal limit someone impacting it and stable system and raised the withdrawal and letting millions of dollars flood out of accounts across 24 different countries by the time end state regains control of the system the next day more than 26,000 transactions had gone through for 40 million dollars that's more than double the largest cash robbery in US history the heist was organized by a crew of hackers in Turkey Romania and Ukraine they were the ones breaking in to end stage and raising the limits but how they get the cards in the first place pulling off a heist this big require global network of debit card thieves it's still in existence today stealing ATM cards easier than you think all use the pin code and a copy of the magnetic stripe but that stripe is the same magnetic encoding that's on a simple cassette tape that makes it easy to copy and easy to steal you can even do it with a cassette player thieves usually steal that data by putting a skimmer over at ATMs card slot and planting a nearby camera to capture the pin code once they have that data they can turn a cheap hotel key into a copy of the ATM card and head to an ATM the big question for criminals is how much money can you make off each car you usually only get one withdrawal before banks pick up on the throg so the big problem is that withdrawal limit with the turkish hacking through on your side that goes from 200 dollars to over a thousand easily worth whatever cut the crew is taking but that loose network also gave investigators a clear path for tracking a group down police arrested one of the cashiers after using a hacked card an ATM in Brooklyn he led them back to the rest of the group and earlier this year one of the crew a Turkish hacker named aircon Vindico Glu pled guilty to computer intrusion conspiracy and other charges which could add up to as much as 57 years in prison the rest of the group is still at large you