Fascinating read!<p>Also I'm really liking the use of different media that decorates/enhances the article, whether it be the animated GIFs of footage, or interactive timelines etc.<p>Was nice to see the credits at the end there too, with the developers and designers getting a shout out for their contribution in putting the piece together.
Great read.<p>>As far as anyone knows, there has never been a gas attack on an American ATM. The leading theory points to the country’s primitive ATM cards. Along with Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, and not many other countries, the U.S. doesn’t require its plastic to contain an encryption chip, so stealing cards remains an effective, nonviolent way to get at the cash in an ATM.<p>Would this really be the reason why there hasn't been a gas attack in the US? Even if a criminal stole an ATM card they would still need a PIN. How does a criminal get the PIN? Especially in a non-violent manner?
I look forward to the day the whole concept of getting pieces of paper from a machine in a wall is looked upon as a vaguely amusing aspect of the past.
3SI, a company which produces other bank security devices (eg, exploding dye packs) claims to have methods to neutralize the explosive gasses in these attacks:<p><a href="https://www.3sisecurity.com/products/agn" rel="nofollow">https://www.3sisecurity.com/products/agn</a><p>I'd be very curious to know if/how this works. So far I haven't been able to turn up patents or any technical details.<p>The Bloomberg article mentioned that no US ATM has been attacked in this way. Must be tough to be a US-based company trying to sell a product to defend against attacks that aren't common here.
These criminals weren't too smart. To begin with, the risk/reward ratio on an attack like that is pretty high. Repeated attacks in the same physical area, even worse. Using people already known to police? Not so smart. And the icing on the cake: involving lots of people!
Very interesting read, what's even more interesting to me is that the place this article focused on is only around 10/15 minutes from where I live and I had absolutely no idea this had ever happened!