Largest Coordinated ATM Rip-off Ever Nets $9+ Million in 30 Minutes

Re:Largest Coordinated ATM Rip-off Ever Nets $9+ Million in ... by alexandros on Thursday February 12, 2009 @06:50PM (#479192)

It seems lax transactional guarantees bit banks in the rear. I am not sure how difficult it would be to avoid parallel use of cards at different ATMs (especially given the inter-bank nature of ATMs), but it was not done, and this weakness was taken advantage of.

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Re:Largest Coordinated ATM Rip-off Ever Nets $9+ Million in ... by tlb on Thursday February 12, 2009 @11:52PM (#479456)

The latency to query a central database should be under 100 mS from anywhere in the country. There's no reason it couldn't be done properly today. But ATM systems were architected in the late 70s and they depend on a network of regional data centers that reconcile nightly.

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Re:Largest Coordinated ATM Rip-off Ever Nets $9+ Million in ... by chris on Thursday February 12, 2009 @08:01PM (#479258)

I agree. Simply disabling an account that was used at more than one ATM within a certain timeframe, based on geographic area, would have limited the damage. Similar to how cell phone cloning is detectable.

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