Popular ATMs were spitting out cash thanks to ‘jackpotting’ flaw reveal hackers

All of us might be aware that ATMs or automated teller machines are the most effective and easy way to get out cash from bank accounts thanks to the facility of an ATM card. Now, this is also secure thanks to a PIN that we only know and also the feature of OTP that comes to our phone we need to enter as well. However, what if we told you that hackers have reached here as well and have breached the ATMs in order to make them “spit out cash” in numbers that we have not seen before.

However, that is exactly the case and this has just been revealed by hackers plenty of years after this hacking took place. Back in 2010, there was a security researcher named Barnaby Jack who is sadly no more with us. He “hacked an ATM live onstage at the Black Hat conference by tricking the cash dispenser into spitting out a stream of dollar bills. The technique was appropriately named “jackpotting.””

After 10 years, we are back to the same things again because “security researchers are presenting two new vulnerabilities in Nautilus ATMs”. The only difference is that the demos were virtual because of the pandemic so a live demo was not possible. The researchers claimed that “their pair of vulnerabilities allowed them to trick a popular standalone retail ATM, commonly found in stores rather than at banks, into dispensing cash at their command”.

It is also revealed that the flaws are there on ATMs for ages without them being replaced. The only condition is that “A hacker would need to be on the same network as the ATM, making it more difficult to launch a successful jackpotting attack”. It is also found out that ATMs often have vulnerabilities that lie dormant for years — in some cases since they were first built.