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| EAST highlights Ram raids and ATM burglary attacks in various countries |
The European ATM Security Team (EAST) has just published its first European Fraud Update for 2014. This is based on country crime updates given by representatives of 16 countries in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), and 3 non-SEPA countries, at the 32nd EAST meeting held at Worldline in Brussels on 12th February 2014.
Skimming at ATMs was reported by sixteen countries, with decreases reported by seven countries and increases by six countries. Skimming devices are getting smaller and more difficult to spot.
Most ATM related skimming losses have migrated away from EMV Chip liability shift areas. Such losses were reported in 40 countries and territories outside of the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and in 3 within SEPA. The USA is still the top location for such losses, followed by Thailand and Vietnam. From the perspective of European card issuers the Asia-Pacific region seems to have eclipsed Latin America for such losses. European fraud counter-measures such as geo-blocking, fraud monitoring capabilities and fraud detection continue to improve.
Skimming attacks on other terminal types were reported by eleven countries, and such attacks have been reported at unattended payment terminals (UPTs) at car wash locations for the first time. Card shimming attacks have been reported at point-of-sale (POS) terminals. Europol’s Cybercrime Centre (EC3) has supported three major cross-border police operations which have taken down three groups of payment card fraudsters.
Cash trapping incidents were reported by fourteen countries, with two of them reporting related arrests, and eight countries reported transaction reversal fraud (TRF) incidents.
The usage of the cash claw continues for both types of attack and a new double-edged variant has been seen for the first time.
The usage of spring traps for card trapping continues. Seven countries reported card trapping incidents.
Ram raids and ATM burglary were reported by nine countries. Nine countries also reported explosive gas attacks and two of them reported attacks on ATMs using solid explosives. The overall rise in explosive attacks in Europe appears to be continuing and EAST will publish statistics in its European ATM Crime Report for 2013, due for publication in April 2014.
