Interesting article on the BBC website.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29537907

A flaw in cash machines that allows criminals to quickly steal wads of cash has been discovered.

Interpol has alerted countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia known to have been targeted - and is carrying out a widespread investigation.

Security firm Kaspersky Labs discovered the hack, which is enabled by entering a series of digits on the keypad.

Infected cash machines can be instructed to dispense 40 notes at once, without a credit or debit card.

So, no individual accounts are debited which, on the surface sounds good for the bank customers.

But, as with all these kind of issues, the customer still picks up the tab due to higher bank charges to cover the additional costs.

That is actually very hard to do as the ATM needs to be infected by the virus using a boot cd, requiring you to open and access the computer inside. Once you open an ATM it will send a signal to the head quarters that the machine is being open. If it is not open the proper way, there will be an alarm. ATM are also connected 24/7 to the main station, if a signal (phone or internet) is lost it will also raise an alarm.

Normally ATM technicians needs to finish the routine update or repair in something like 30-40min time. If they exceed this time, they need to close the machine and report back before they can finish the job for safety reasons. I've asked a ATM technician once when they did repairs.

The recent most sophisticated atm hack is using a super slim card reader that fits inside the atm card slot. That is extremely hard to detect unless you open the card slot up.

"But, as with all these kind of issues, the customer still picks up the tab due to higher bank charges to cover the additional costs."

No they don't, the banks carry insurance to cover these instances.

Yes, they do. Who will pay the insurance premiums, in the end?

Just my 2 cents