The United States secret service warned yesterday that American banks need to be on high alert to ATM "jackpotting", a scam that has proliferated throughout Europe and Mexico, the last few years.
Essentially, "jackpotting" is known as a method that thieves use to contravene an ATM's security by opening the cabinet, putting in a laptop with a certain "skimming" program connected to the port and closing the machine. Then a "dove" comes by to operate the ATM, calls the first thief who activates the code remotely to allow the machine to empty it's cash dispenser, sometimes up to 23 notes per second.
The thieves often work in pairs, often dressed up like electronic repairmen, with sign written uniforms and vehicles, easily conning staff at ATM locations to let them in.
A large issue stems from the manufacturers of the ATM cabinets that are apparently using a uniform standard key lock on all cabinets. All locks are keyed alike, allowing for many different people to have access to the key and the locks.
About 25 years ago, I worked for a large metropolitan security patrol company that were contracted by banks to refill empty ATM's. The security control center monitoring station would send three (3) patrol cars to every ATM refill request. Each ATM was housed in a solid cabinet and controlled with two (2) separate mechanical dial combination locks, that also had lockable dials. One patrol officer would have the dial lock keys, one patrol officer would be given the combination to lock A and the other patrol officer would be given the combination to lock B.
The security was taken very seriously and using multiple people provided multiple required credentials and physical presence to complete the ATM refilling task.
These days, I see it often where a lone technician is often called to perform an ATM service at a bank or a convenience store or a bar etc. I think that it is especially important to have multiple people in attendance for security reasons, especially where hard currency is involved.
Often, locksmiths and safe technicians would maintain contracts with financial institutions to regularly attend the ATM site and change the dial combinations regularly, to prevent unauthorised knowledge of combinations to be reused over and over.
Perhaps a new opportunity for would be locksmiths and safe technicians exists to set up maintenance contracts with financial institutions to regularly alter the combination locks on ATM machines.
(Source...)
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