WASHIINGTON—Financial institutions are being warned about another threat to their ATMs.
The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Treasury Department all have alerted U.S. financial institutions of a threat they’re calling "FASTCash."
The agencies assert that North Korea is behind the cyber-attacks that have active since late 2016 and have allowed hackers to steal tens of millions of dollars. FASTCash schemes remotely compromise payment switch application servers within FIs to facilitate fraudulent transactions.
So far, most of the FastCash activity has been limited to financial institution ATMs in Africa and Asia, with no confirmed FASTCash incidents affecting U.S. institutions, the agencies stated.
The threat against ATMs continues to rise, with federal agencies issuing several warnings to financial institutions in recent months. As CUToday.info reported, the Secret Service recently warned financial institutions about a form of ATM skimming that involves cutting cupcake-sized holes in a cash machine and then using a combination of magnets and medical devices to siphon customer account data directly from the card reader inside the ATM.
In August, the FBI warned financial institutions of a worldwide ATM cash-out scheme.