Skimming devices that crooks install inside fuel station gas pumps frequently rely on an embedded Bluetooth component allowing thieves to collect stolen credit card data from the pumps wirelessly with any mobile device. The downside of this approach is that Bluetooth-based skimmers can be detected by anyone else with a mobile device. Now, investigators in the New York say they are starting to see pump skimmers that use cannibalized cell phone components to send stolen card data via text message.
Skimmers that transmit stolen card data wirelessly via GSM text messages and other mobile-based communications methods are not new; they have been present — if not prevalent — in ATM skimming devices for ages.
But this is the first instance KrebsOnSecurity is aware of in which such SMS skimmers have been found inside gas pumps, and that matches the experience of several states hardest hit by pump skimming activity.
Full Article.
