ATM Software Flaws Left Piles of Cash for Anyone Who Knew to Look

jeffw@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 136 points –
ATM Software Flaws Left Piles of Cash for Anyone Who Knew to Look
wired.com
7

Thats one of those things that makes you think "aw man!!! Why didn't I know???"

But realistically, if you had known you might walk off with a few thousand dollars, but somebody would have noticed. Then there would be an investigation.

Because if a poor person living in the projects dies of starvation? Oh, that's fine. That's a feature, not a bug.

But if a billion dollar bank is missing a few thousand dollars? That's cause to ruin someones life.

So in the end it's good you DIDN'T know. Because it's a big club, and you ain't in it.

They'd investigate the shit out of that but if someone broke into your house and stole your $2k TV they'd file a report and tell you to pay to change your locks.

Because if a poor person living in the projects dies of starvation? Oh, that's fine. That's a feature, not a bug.

What's "the projects" in this context? I'm not a native English speaker and have seen this used in similar contexts but I don't know what it means. Translation fails me, I know what the word means but it clearly has some different usage here.

"The Projects" is a term used to describe government provided (or subsidized) housing for poor people. The term is generally used to indicate "a place in a city where income is low and crime is usually high".

It describes removing the hard drive in the article and patching it, doesn't sound like much of a real exploit to me. Yeah you probably shouldn't be able to patch it but isn't getting your hands on the physical hard disk much more of a problem.