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Comment by rhexs | Hacker News Reader

Embedded software is easy to hack. Spend quite a bit of money getting access to the binary running a common ATM platform. Reverse engineer it. Find a vulnerability. Trigger it. Done!

The age of (common) embedded system exploitation is finally upon us.

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The "hack" in question involves replacing the hard drive.

This isn't an embedded issue. This is a physical access to OS issue.

It doesn't help that almost all the fascia locks on each vendor's machines are a standard key. With that standard key, you have full access to the computer or embedded device drive.

Nowadays the communication link to the dispenser is encrypted, making swapping the hard drive useless. The real problem is the machines aren't replaced very often so there are quite a few old models out in the field that are susceptible to these sort of attacks.

> It doesn't help that almost all the fascia locks on each vendor's machines are a standard key.

Interesting. Is there a source for this?

There is a defcon talk about jackpotting ATMs.

The "hack" in question involves replacing the hard drive.

Secure Boot should be able to prevent this even with physical access.

I do not understand. If a legitimate version of windows is installed on the hard drive, how secure boot will stop it ?

You're thinking of Secure Boot as it's typically used, where firmware on the motherboard verifies that the kernel is signed by whoever wrote the kernel, e.g. Microsoft. But there's no reason you couldn't have the motherboard OEM load, say, the ATM manufacturer's public key, and have Secure Boot verify that the kernel has been signed by the ATM manufacturer. Then the motherboard will refuse to boot an OS which wasn't signed by the ATM manufacturer, even if it's otherwise "pure".

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