Crooks stole $12.7 million at 1,400 Japanese ATMs earlier this month, with around 100 people making 14,000 transactions with 1,600 counterfeit credit cards based on stolen information from real cards issued by a South African bank.
The theft could have been avoided, a security expert said, if ATMs accepting the old-style, easy-to-copy magnetic stripe cards moved to two-factor authentication.
In many countries, the liability for magnetic-stripe card fraud has shifted from card issuers to merchants, helping push the payments industry towards EMV, or smart chip-based cards, which are significantly more secure.
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