Black Box attacks „sharp increase on European ATMs” – EAST report

The European Association for Secure Transactions (EAST) has just published a European Payment Terminal Crime Report covering the first six months of 2020 which reports a sharp increase in Black Box attacks on European ATMs.

ATM malware and logical attacks against ATMs were up 269% (from 35 to 129) and all the reported attacks were Black Box attacks.  A Black Box attack is the connection of an unauthorised device which sends dispense commands directly to the ATM cash dispenser, in order to ‘cash-out’ or ‘jackpot’ the ATM.  Related losses were up from less than €1,000, to just over €1 million.   

EAST Executive Director Lachlan Gunn said, „Overall crime at terminals has decreased during the lockdown phase of the pandemic.  While this rise in Black Box attacks is of concern, most such attacks remain unsuccessful.  Our Expert Group on All Terminal Fraud (EGAF) is focussed on addressing this issue, with close cooperation between industry partners and law enforcement.  In January 2019 EGAF worked with Europol to update a document, published by Europol, entitled ‘Guidance & recommendations regarding logical attacks on ATMs’.  This is currently available in English, French, German, Russian, Spanish and Turkish”. 

Terminal related fraud attacks were down 66% (from 10,723 to 3,631 incidents).  Card skimming fell to another all-time low (down from 731 to 321 incidents) and transaction reversal fraud (TRF) at ATMs decreased by 97% (down from 3,405 to just 108 incidents).  Total losses of €109 million were reported, down 12% from the €124 million reported during the same period in 2019. 

ATM related physical attacks were down 23% (from 2,376 to 1,829 incidents).  Attacks due to ram raids and ATM burglary were down 34% (from 610 to 405 incidents) and ATM explosive attacks (including explosive gas and solid explosive attacks) were up 0.4% (from 503 to 505 incidents).  Losses due to ATM related physical attacks were €12.6 million, an 11% increase from the €11.4 million reported during the same period in 2019.  This increase was driven by a rise in losses due to explosive and gas attacks, which were up 49% from €5.1 million to €7.6 million.

A summary of the report statistics under the main headings is in the table below.  The full report, with breakdowns for each crime category, is available to EAST members.