Shields Up!: Using ATMs in some Las Vegas hotels may be a real gamble

Guests at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas may have had their financial information stolen by ATMs infected with malware. The possible breach was first discovered by a conference presenter at the Defcon hacker conference.

He used one of the hotel’s ATMs to make an attempted withdrawal of $200. The machine accepted his card and his bank promptly deducted the amount from his balance, but the machine did not present him with any cash. Further investigation revealed that several other guests had the same thing happen to them when using the hotel’s ATMs, including a man who had tried to withdraw $1000.

At first, the hotel did little about the complaints. When notified, they refused to shut down the machines, but did put “Out of Order” signs on them. Chris Paget, the Defcon attendee who happens to have expertise in credit card and hardware security, refused to accept the hotel’s lame response to the issue and as a result both the Las Vegas Metro PD and the U.S. Secret Service are investigating.