As the Wannacry outbreak proved earlier this year, running the latest operating system with the updates and fixes provided by its vendor installed is crucial to maintaining the security of your infrastructure against attacks. More than a decade and a half after its release, Windows XP still powers a lot of infrastructure around the world and as with all old operating systems, new exploits for it are discovered regularly.

One such hack was discovered by Russian website Habrahabr, which found that ATMs operated by a Russian bank still running Windows XP can be fooled into giving someone full access to the machine by pressing the 'Shift' key 5 times in quick succession. Dubbed 'Sticky Keys', triggering this accessibility feature allows a user to access the Windows XP UI, complete with the Start menu and taskbar.

These parts of the operating system are, of course, kept hidden from the user on ATMs and having access to these tools can allow you to then deploy malware of your choice on the machine or to modify the operation of the ATM for malicious purposes. If you were so inclined, you could also shut down the ATM software and use the machine as a regular PC.

The issue affects ATMs operated by the state-owned Sberbank, which was informed of the exploit two weeks ago. Despite promising to do so, it still haven't fixed the problem.



Posted: Dec 27, 2017 11:51 am
Related Forum: PC General Forum

Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/sitcky-keys-can-be-used-to-hack-russian-atms-running-windows-xp