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Security researcher to demonstrate ATM hack, rootkit at Black Hat
Barnaby Jack was originally scheduled to give a talk at Black Hat last year on vulnerabilities he discovered in Automated Teller Machines (ATM), but his talk was yanked by employer Juniper Networks, due to complaints by the manufacturer of the affected ATM. Not deterred, the security researcher finally got around the restrictions one year later by taking on a new job, this time as director of security research with IOActive.
Jack apparently made good use of the one year by polishing up his original work, doubling his demonstration to two new model ATMs--and from different vendors, to boot. In addition, Jack says he will be unveiling a "multi-platform" rootkit crafted for exploiting ATMs.
Referring to the action movie Terminator 2, Jack was reported to have said, "I've always liked the scene in Terminator 2 where John Connor walks up to an ATM, interfaces his Atari to the card reader and retrieves cash from the machine." Where his work is concerned, Jack added, "I think I've got that kid beat."
To spur the industry to defend itself from such attacks, Jack plans to spill all the secrets in a new talk titled "Jackpotting Automated Teller Machines," at this year's Black Hat conference held on July 28 and 29 in Las Vegas. Jack intends to demonstrate various local, as well as network-based attacks. The exploits are targeted at the underlying layer of software that runs the ATMs.
Black Hat Director Jeff Moss noted that Jack's talk will break new ground, especially since ATMs don't traditionally receive serious scrutiny from security researchers. On the planned demonstration by Jack, Moses said, "Apparently you can make all the money come out."
For more on this story:
- check out this article at Businessweek
- check out this article at Softpedia
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