Hackers Target ATMs in US

JPMorgan Chase ATMs stand near a door as customers walk past a Duane Reade store in New York. Photo: Reuters
JPMorgan Chase ATMs stand near a door as customers walk past a Duane Reade store in New York. Photo: Reuters
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Hackers Target ATMs in US

JPMorgan Chase ATMs stand near a door as customers walk past a Duane Reade store in New York. Photo: Reuters
JPMorgan Chase ATMs stand near a door as customers walk past a Duane Reade store in New York. Photo: Reuters

Cyber criminals targeted US cash machines with tools that force them to spit out cash in hacking schemes known as “jackpotting.”

The two ATM makers Diebold Nixdorf Inc. and NCR Corp. did not identify any victims or say how much money had been lost.

Jackpotting has been rising worldwide in recent years, though it is unclear how much cash has been stolen because victims and police often do not disclose details.

Hackers who use this method drag the ATM to a trap in order to steal the money it stocks.

The attacks were reported earlier on Saturday by the security news website Krebs on Security, which said they had begun last year in Mexico. The companies confirmed to Reuters on Saturday they had sent out the alerts to clients.

NCR said in a Friday alert that the cases were the first confirmed “jackpotting” losses in the United States.

It said its equipment had not been targeted in the recent attacks, but that it was still a concern for the entire ATM industry.

The alert said: “This should be treated by all ATM deployers as a call to action to take appropriate steps to protect their ATMs against these forms of attack,”

Diebold Nixdorf said in a separate Friday alert that US authorities had warned the company that hackers were targeting one of its ATM models, known as Opteva, which went out of production several years ago.

Krebs on Security reported that a confidential US Secret Service alert sent to banks said the hackers targeted stand-alone ATMs typically located in pharmacies, big box retailers and drive-thru ATMs.

Reuters was unable to obtain a copy of the Secret Service report and an agency representative declined comment. Officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation could not immediately be reached.

Russian cyber security firm Group IB has reported that cyber criminals remotely attacked cash machines in more than a dozen countries across Europe in 2016. Similar attacks were also reported that year in Thailand and Taiwan.



Alien Planet Lashed by Huge Flares from its 'Angry Beast' Star

File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
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Alien Planet Lashed by Huge Flares from its 'Angry Beast' Star

File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger

Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star - a predicament never previously observed.

This exoplanet, as planets beyond our solar system are called, orbits its star so tightly that it appears to trigger flares from the stellar surface - larger than any observed from the sun - reaching several million miles (km) into space that over time may strip much of this unlucky world's atmosphere, Reuters reported.

The phenomenon appears to be caused by the planet's interaction with the star's magnetic field, according to the researchers. And this star is a kind known to flare, especially when young.

"A young star of this type is an angry beast, especially if you're sitting as close up as this planet does," said Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy astrophysicist Ekaterina Ilin, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

The star, called HIP 67522, is slightly more massive than the sun and is located about 407 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

This star and planet, as well as a second smaller gas planet also detected in this planetary system, are practically newborns. Whereas the sun and our solar system's planets are roughly 4.5 billion years old, this star is about 17 million years old, with its planets slightly younger.

The planet, named HIP 67522 b, has a diameter almost the size of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet, but with only 5% of Jupiter's mass. That makes it one of the puffiest exoplanets known, with a consistency reminiscent of cotton candy (candy floss).

It orbits five times closer to its star than our solar system's innermost planet Mercury orbits the sun, needing only seven days to complete an orbit.

A flare is an intense eruption of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the outermost part of a star's atmosphere, called the corona. So how does HIP 67522 b elicit huge flares from the star? As it orbits, it apparently interacts with the star's magnetic field - either through its own magnetic field or perhaps through the presence of conducting material such as iron in the planet's composition.

"We don't know for sure what the mechanism is. We think it is plausible that the planet moves within the star's magnetic field and whips up a wave that travels along magnetic field lines to the star. When the wave reaches the stellar corona, it triggers flares in large magnetic field loops that store energy, which is released by the wave," Ilin said.

"As it moves through the field like a boat on a lake, it creates waves in its wake," Ilin added. "The flares these waves trigger when they crash into the star are a new phenomenon. This is important because it had never been observed before, especially at the intensity detected."

The researchers believe it is a specific type of wave called an Alfvén wave, named for 20th century Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvén, that propagates due to the interaction of magnetic fields.

The flares may heat up and inflate the planet's atmosphere, which is dominated by hydrogen and helium. Being lashed by these flares could blast away lighter elements from the atmosphere and reduce the planet's mass over perhaps hundreds of millions of years.

"At that time, it will have lost most if not all the light elements, and become what's called a sub-Neptune - a gas planet smaller than Neptune," Ilin said, referring to the smallest of our solar system's gas planets.

The researchers used observations by two space telescopes: NASA's TESS, short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS, short for CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite.

The plight of HIP 67522 b illustrates the many circumstances under which exoplanets exist.

"It is certainly no sheltered youth for this planet. But I am not sad about it. I enjoy diversity in all things nature, and what this planet will eventually become - perhaps a sub-Neptune rich in heavy elements that did not evaporate - is no less fascinating than what we observe today."