New virus infects ATM , steals money from banks

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 30 March 2009, 15:57 IST   |    13 Comments
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New virus infects ATM , steals money from banks
Moscow: Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) may not be a safe way of transaction anymore as a new software virus has been found out which infects ATMs to steal money from bank accounts of their users. Doctor Web and 'Kaspersky Lab, two major anti-virus software producers have discovered such virus in the networks of several bank ATMs, which is able to collect information from bank cards. This is a malicious program intended to infect and survive in ATMs. It is possible that new software will appear, aimed at illegitimately using banking information and removing funds," an official of the Kaspersky Lab was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency. According to the official, the virus is a Trojan which is able to infect the popular American Diebold brand of ATMs, used in Russia and Ukraine. Judging by the programming code used, there is a high probability that the programmer comes from one of the former Soviet republics. The computer security experts say the number of infected ATMs is minimal but individual bank cardholders will not be able to detect whether an ATM is infected or not. However, banks can run security software to find out if their machines are at risk.