Malaysia boleh: 3 countries, 3 card-skimmers, all Malaysian

On April 28th, 4 men were caught for installing card-skimming devices on ATM cash machines in Bangkok Thailand. They were all Malaysian.

On the 14th of May, 6 men were caught for installing similar devices in ATM machines in Jakarta Indonesia. They were all Malaysian.

On the 8th of June, 2 men were convicted in Singapore for installing card-skimming devices on ATMs in Singapore. They were both Malaysian. I wrote about this more than 2 years ago, when some DBS customers noticed withdrawals from their accounts occurring in Malaysia.

Why are Malaysians getting involved in these syndicated crimes? Are they a front, or are they the the fall-guys, or are they the brains of the operations?

I guess another way to ask the question is also–why aren’t they committing their crimes in Malaysia? Why go to Thailand to commit a crime when you can do it here–surely the banks must be doing something right with our security. But don’t let your guard down, here’s the most important thing you have to do when you withdraw money from an ATM:

Cover the PIN-PAD with your hand when you’re entering the PIN

Without the PIN, even if the criminals manage to clone your card–it’ll be difficult to do anything damaging. So remember guys, always cover your PIN. It’s unfortunate that Credit Cards in Malaysia are signature only–if they were Chip and Pin we’d be in a much more secure environment. However, a initiative to implement Chip and Pin in Malaysia has been delayed, so we’re unsure when Malaysians will get PIN enabled Credit Cards.

Here’s a video with more info:

*Now some may claim that in Malaysia we use EMV rather than the mag-stripe in the video and therefore we are more secure. Yes, we are more secure, but we’re not completely secure. EMV is a pretty old standard, and more and more exploits have been released for EMV. It’s only a matter of time, before someone discovers a full-blown vulnerability in the EMV standard that would render EMV cards clone-able (or much easier cloneable than they are today).