Rippleshot Blog

As if financial institutions didn’t have enough fraud problems to worry about, there appears to be another growing trend in the hacker ecosystem that’s caught the attention of the FBI: ATM cash outs.

Like most fraud trends, ATM cash outs aren’t a new phenomenon, but they have been getting national attention this month after it was reported that cybercriminals are likely in the works to commit a global fraud scheme that’s commonly referred to as an ATM cash-out. These financial attacks allow for fraudsters to withdraw millions of dollars in hours, according to a report by Krebs on Security.

This scheme involves malware that allows the hackers to gain access to banks’ customer card data, along with network access, in order to execute the theft of funds from ATMs on a massive scale. These “cybercrime gangs” as they referred to are believed to use phishing tactics to break into a bank or payment card processor system. This involves removing fraud controls from banks that would stop limits on the number of customer ATM transactions/limits allowed daily.

A new study indicates there is a high level of disconnect between consumer trust over how organizations handle personal data, and how those companies perceive being equipped to fully protect that data.

The true weight from the massive Equifax data breach that’s believed to have impacted roughly 148 million Americans is going to be felt for years to come. One year later, there seems to plenty of questions as to how the company dealt with the aftermath, and what it is doing to prevent a breach of such magnitude from occurring again.

The Equifax breach has dominated headlines in the fraud ecosystem not just because of the total number of exposed records, but also because of the scope of what those records entailed. The nature of the sensitive details — including SSNs, credit card details and tax IDs — are what placed the incident on the list of worst corporate data breaches in the U.S.

So what’s happened in the year following Equifax’s discovery of the breach? Besides a lot of public criticism, and new leadership, there’s been a series of congressional hearings and investigations that have left the credit reporting agency in the hot seat since the incident was first reported.

The latest data breach report signals both good and bad news as it relates to the costs of breaches since 2017.

The bad news? Research from the Ponemon Institute and IBM Security shows losses related to data breaches have increased 6.4 percent in the past year. The good news? For those companies that were able to contain the breach within 30 days, their losses have been less significant.

The study, which reviewed the impact of data breaches on a global scale, specifically noted that U.S. companies saw the highest average data breach cost at $7.91 million. Compared to the global average of $3.86 billion, this figure is more than double in the U.S. For companies that were able to identify a breach and implement a remedy within a month or less, savings were roughly $1 million when compared with those who did not.

Gas station skimmers have been a heated topic across the fraud management ecosystem for years. Since the EMV chip card compliance deadline isn’t until October 2020  — roughly five years after the liability shift was implemented for merchants — this gap has left gas stations in the fraud spotlight.

Just last week, heading into the July 4th holiday, the U.S. Secret Service once again released warnings reminding consumers about the dangers of credit card fraud that can stem from gas station skimmers. In recent years, skimmers have been a rapidly-growing problem due to tech advancements that’s allowed them to be designed slimmer than a credit card — and cheaper to produce. With fraudsters’ ability to insert them seamlessly into machines with less obtrusive methods, this has led to an uptick in concerns from issuers in how to proactively confront this expensive problem.

Identity fraud doesn't discriminate when it comes to age. 

New research from Javelin indicates that more than 1 million children were victims of identity theft in 2017, which amounted to roughly $2.67 billion in losses. Within those figures, the report found that a majority (two-thirds) of the kids impacted were under the age of eight, while 20 percent were between 8-12 years old.

What's contributing to this increase? And why is this trend becoming increasingly problematic for financial institutions? 

New security threats in the financial ecosystem are far from a new phenomenon, which is why financial institutions are constantly having to enhance their breach detection technology investments. New threats emerge on a regular basis, and fraudsters continue to capitalize on vulnerable payment data as their techniques get faster and more sophisticated.

A new report from PYMNTS.com highlights the latest security challenges financial institutions face as the ecosystem becomes increasingly connected. This report provides an in-depth look into how banks and financial companies can combat the rise in account takeovers, along with rising concerns over cyber attacks and data breaches.

Developing trust as a fraud analytics platform doesn’t happen overnight. Here at Rippleshot, we’ve been working for years to make our fraud platform more than just about the data science. We’re all about the people, too.

In a recent interview with Bizcast, our co-founder Canh Tran shared his perspective on what it takes to grow a startup in a rapidly-changing industry — while still delivering customer success through our people-centric model.

When Forbes published an article titled: "The battle against synthetic identity fraud is just beginning," it was clear this problem was becoming a widespread issue for financial institutions.

The past few years the chatter about credit card fraud has been all about the major data breaches at retail stores. The Equifax breach happened and the conversations began to evolve. It was reported that 145 million social security numbers, along with 209,000 credit card details were breached. Not to mention the millions of other sensitive personal details that were leaked. The chatter about synthetic identity fraud quickly gained traction.

Here at Rippleshot, this has been a topic we've been busy tracking. Recently, Our Co-Founder Canh Tran was at Trellance's Immersion 18 conference where he was interviewed for BIG Fintech's latest podcast. Tran dove into the latest Synthetic Fraud trends, and explained why this problem isn't going away anytime soon.

Fiserv, a global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced its partnership with Rippleshot to offer Card Risk Office℠ Fraud Warning, an early breach detection solution that allows financial institutions to identify potential fraud events 30-60 days prior to network alerts.

Across the payments ecosystem, fraud continues to be the increasingly complex and expensive problem that all financial institutions are attempting to tackle. To understand how payment fraud is evolving, FIs must identify the origin of the problem itself. 

A new report by Javelin dove into leading card fraud trends, the greatest threats to financial institutions and what strategies can help curb the rise of payment fraud. The report highlighted some core issues in the payment ecosystem and how these problems have transformed over the past year.

There’s never quite a dull moment in the world of credit card fraud, which was the case this week in the mainstream news cycle. With topics like “chip card scheme,” “fake fraud alerts” and “card shimming scam” in the headlines, it’s easy to see why banks are rushing to implement better, faster fraud detection solutions.

That was just a sliver of what made the headlines in the world of payment card fraud news this week. We’ve taken a deeper dive into the reports that surfaced, and have explored why these problems keep showing back up in the mainstream news cycle.

Synthetic fraud isn’t a new phenomenon, but with an increase of incidents across the fraud ecosystem — from credit card fraud to identity theft — this problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

In fact, it’s estimated that Synthetic ID fraud accounts for 85% of all identity fraud in the U.S., and continues to rise annually. A report from TransUnion reported that between 2016’s Q4 and 2017’s Q4, suspected synthetic fraud balances rose 5.2%. Collectively, this has become a $290 million problem.

It’s been a busy week in the world of financial institution regulation as headlines about Dodd-Frank, the Equifax breach, credit freezes and data security stole the spotlight. While these four topics have been at the forefront of the news cycle for many months, each of them found their way into the top news items.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s been happening in Washington, and how it may impact the world of financial services.

It’s no surprise that debit card fraud is on the rise, but what’s noteworthy is the rate at which this figure is increasing.

New data from FICO indicates the number of debit cards compromised in 2017 increased 10 percent from 2016. This figure refers to debit cards used at U.S. ATMs and merchant card readers. Compromises of ATMs and merchant devices rose 8 percent in the same time period.