Physical ATM attacks show explosive growth in Europe: losses of EUR 36 million, a 16% increase on 2017.

The number of physical attacks on ATMs in Europe has risen for the fourth consecutive year, although this was partially offset by a fall in the number of malware and logical attacks, according to industry association E.A.S.T.

Last year ATM related physical attacks rose 27% when compared with 2017 (up from 3584 to 4549 incidents), and caused losses of EUR36 million, a 16% increase on 2017, finextra.com said.

Explosive attacks were down three per cent but there were still more than a thousand such incidents on the continent, says East (European Association for Secure Transactions).

Lachlan Gunn, executive director, East, says: „The success rate for solid explosive attacks is of particular concern – we estimate that the average cash loss per solid explosive attack is EUR 27,065.

„Such attacks continue to spread geographically with two countries reporting them for the first time in early 2019.”

Meanwhile, just 157 ATM malware and logical attacks were reported in 2018, 18% down on the previous year. Related losses plummeted from EUR1.52 million to EUR0.45 million.

Losses from payment terminal fraud also fell dramatically, down 30% to EUR247 million. This fall was mainly driven by a 26% decrease in card skimming incidents and by a 66% fall in transaction reversal fraud incidents.