To be fair, drilling a 3 inch hole in a modern ATM is no easy task. We are talking about high-grade steel, a layer of fiberglass, etc. Hence "portable power drill" is a bit misleading.
I have a tendency to pull on things like ATM covers, credit card slots, and the like. And that's because we have lots of skimmers that are found at local gas stations and places around here (big college presence).
So far, I've found an opened gasoline pump door. I called attendant and went to a different pump (attendands didnt have keys for that....) .
Ive also found an ATM that was partially locked and came opened when I gave it a tug. I called our bank's security after that one.
I also found a skimmer on a gas pump as well. It had a fishy look to it and gave it a tug. Pop. Was just a simple card reader and cam module in 1. I harvested the parts and put the microsd card through a good format.
Or you can come on over to our hackerspace, Bloominglabs. We have open houses every Wednesday from 7-10P, no matter what day that falls on :)
Perhaps I'll drop by the new place some time, though.
I wouldn't leave that thing at an outside location with enough money in it to hurt me, unless the robberies were insured or so seldom as to be considered a cost of doing business.
The hardened part of the ATM is only the safe (which, by design, actually has several large holes in it as well). You won't be casually drilling through the safe with a hole-saw or other portable equipment without spending a considerable amount of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyq7xBUhsAo
Hell, depending on the gauge you could probably carve out a 3" hole with a dremel tool and a diamond bit in a reasonable amount of time.
You cannot casually drill a safe. Not talking about your hardware store variety of safe, or a 'fireproof safe'. But a legit safe like you'd find in an ATM has a number of countermeasures to ensure that its not possible to drill the safe in a short amount of time.
Mixed into the steel is usually a number of drill-bit-breaking things like hardened ceramic/steel ball bearings, odd shaped chunks of metal, plastics which all react differently to different attacks in order to ensure that one attack does not compromise the door and that its near-impossible to do quickly. Bigger safes employ the use of fancy mixtures of concrete and metal to resist even more aggressive attacks like thermal lancing etc by turning the whole door/wall into a giant heat-sink.
Safes are really cool.
If not, why bother going through the front door? Isn't that door mostly for show? Aren't the other five sides mostly concrete and rebar? Isn't that easier to go through? Or do big safes really have thick steel on all six sides?
No point in putting an extremely expensive vault door in a room that's got just concrete and re-bar.
The other thing is to make it harder to access those other walls as opposed to the front where you can walk up to it.