Manchester man uses DAP to siphon cash from ATMs

While sniffing out ATM info has been used by tricksters criminals for years, a Manchester-based bloke was trafficking private bank information from various cards to illegally purchase goods -- with the help of DAPs, no less. Although your evil twin could manage to reprogram an ATM to disperse 300 percent more cash than it really should, this fellow secretly attached an (unsurprisingly anonymous) "MP3 player" to the backs of free-standing cash machines in "local bars, bingo halls, and bowling alleys." The device recorded the tones from transactions, which were then decoded and "turned into information used to clone new credit cards." The fellow learned his savvy computing skills from "a friend in Cambridge," and was oddly not caught jacking cash or throwing down on a new HDTV; rather, police caught on to his scheming when they located a counterfeit bank card in his vehicle during a routine traffic stop, which led them back to his presumably disclosing home. While we applaud the ingenuity, the motives are certainly below traditional moral standards, but this certainly isn't the first (nor the last) criminal offense involving DAPs.

[Zeke @ Nov 15th 2006 11:41AM]

I think that all DAPs siphon cash from ATMs. But in a legal way.

[strider_mt2k @ Nov 15th 2006 11:43AM]

Sure, look at what Apple's been...

Naw, too easy.

[The Jeremy @ Nov 15th 2006 12:20PM]

Not impressed.

I want to see a working port to the Atari Portfolio PDA, just as the young John Conner did in *T2*.

[sebastienb @ Nov 15th 2006 12:22PM]

Thats called phreaking! I taught that phreaking was dead, guess not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

[Brendan @ Nov 15th 2006 12:31PM]

actually, phreaking deal exclusivly with the phone systems, at least,so while the idea is similar, it is not the same.

[strider_mt2k @ Nov 15th 2006 12:53PM]

There is a third-party (non-bank) ATM at a gym down from my store.
You can hear it DTMF-ing away when it does your transaction, but it never occurred to me how easy it would be to lift those DTMF tones using a DAP.
(It couldn't be that easy, could it? I thought it was simply dialing out!)

I'm gonna have to capture mine now and take a look.

[JD @ Nov 15th 2006 1:24PM]

@ strider_mt2k - check out this site if you wanna buy a prebuilt converter to convert those tones to #'s ;)

http://www.dschmidt.com/dtmf.html

[Matt W. @ Nov 15th 2006 2:46PM]

OMG, I better stop using the Chase ATMs at Duane Reade. Someone's bound to try this with one of those machines. I've noticed that at one particular location you can actually see the phone jack that the machine plugs into!

[grable @ Nov 15th 2006 5:33PM]

So the police searches your car over minor trafic violations in the U.K??

Thats gotta suck!

[richard @ Nov 15th 2006 5:41PM]

Wow, Criminals in Manchester are getting smarter. I'm just used to the kind in hoods that try to blatently punch you in the face and steal your money that way.

Very subtle...