ATM Pins Are Read with Thermal-Imaging Cameras!

Courtesy: http://www.wired.com

You might want to make sure that there aren’t any cameras behind you looking at your ATM pin or doing anything else. You’ll probably also make sure that no one can see you type your pin, but you probably never wondered what would happen after you left and someone used their thermal camera to figure out your pin (most of the time).

It’s official. Security experts have confirmed that newer ATM thefts happen when thieves use thermal cameras to figure out someone’s ATM pin. How? Well, on most ATM’s, the keypads are usually made of plastic pads. As you know metal keypads are immune to this problem because they don’t store heat, but plastic pads store heat so well that you can even tell the order the pin was typed in! Even the reading of the numbers can be figured out with many computer programs!

While this can be a problem to many people. I just suggest to stay out of this problem, use ATM’s with metal pads to keep your self safe from any sort of hacking. Hacking with ATM’s have been much more easier as people improve technology with software and as ATM’s stay the same. Want to prevent all this hacking? I suggest we should rest our fingers on the other keys just to be safe.

If you’ve ever though about it, what are the odds of getting your pin hacked? Pretty high when 4 digits are found. But how many pins are there to test? This can put up a suspicion to all banks if they find out a person trying to type in a pin 16 times. Eventually they won’t allow you to try anymore, but what if the person will get it on the first attempt? It can always happen, so that’s why, just try to place your fingers on ever key.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/thermal-imaging-camera-can-read-your-atm-pin/