According to the Twitter feed of Chris Paget, who attended the DefCon conference at the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas, security and management at the Rio hotel were ‘well aware of [the] ATM pwnage' (an unauthorised party taking control of it) but refused to turn them off and local police were not able to do much.
He had initially claimed that he had been defrauded for $US200, while two others had been taken for $US400 and $US1,000. He said that security did not want to know about the situation and reports from other attendants showed that it ‘looks like all of the diebold ATMs at Rio are pwned'.
Responsibility was eventually handed over to the Nevada Gaming Commission for investigation who then handed the responsibility back to the police department.
Paget was clear to point out that the ATMs were Diebold machines, and said: “Just to be clear, ATMs were pwned (not fake), at Rio not the Riv. Multiple machines, victims, and places in the casino.”
He later claimed that he spoke to someone from the Las Vegas Secret Service who were ‘taking it seriously, reading between the lines it seems like there's more going on'.
Despite notes being placed on the affected ATMs, Paget claimed that ‘people have been lifting them up to use them anyway' and that it was ‘morally wrong to walk away' until the ATMs were switched off.
He also said that he had cancelled the card used and had the transaction reversed, and hoped it was ‘that easy for everyone'.
