Banks bid to secure dispensers

The hacking of Government Savings Bank (GSB) ATM machines has sparked concerns among other local banks using the same model, despite their attempts to put a brave face on their machines’ security.

The Siam Commercial Bank’s first executive vice-president Phanporn Kongyingyong said some of its ATM machines are supplied by NCR, the company that manufactured the GSB ATMs that were infected with malware and caused a 12 million baht cash shortfall.

“It is not necessary for us to shut down our ATMs supplied by NCR because we have backup software to protect our system from hackers.” said Ms Phanporn.

Ms Phanporn said the bank has contacted NCR to see whether it can improve its software to fend off any further attacks by thieves.

However, Boonson Jenchaimahakoon, senior executive vice-president of GSB said that using backup software might not be enough to secure banks, given that the company had a backup system in place when it was attacked.

“It might not have anything to do with the backup software; we need to investigate further.

Mr Bonsoon referred to the recent hacking of ATMs in Taiwan, which ran on IT company Wincor Nixdorf’s software, as an example that the Thai incident proves the lack of security is more than just the fault of one company’s software

In the GSB case, it was discovered that a total of 12.29 million baht in cash was missing from 21 machines after the malware attack.