Card skimming at European ATMs hits a six year low - but explosive attacks are rising

The European ATM Security Team (EAST) has reported another fall in ATM related card skimming incidents, while card trapping incidents and ATM explosive attacks continue to rise.  A summary of the statistics can be seen in the image below.

ATM explosive attacks and low tech fraud incidents increase in Europe

The European ATM Security Team (EAST) has just published a European ATM Crime Report covering the first six months of 2013.  This shows significant rises in both low tech fraud incidents and ATM explosive attacks, while card skimming incidents fell again.

The overall increase in low tech fraud incidents is due to a surge in the number of cash trapping and transaction reversal fraud incidents.  7,885 such incidents were reported, up 77% from the 4,464 incidents reported in H1 2012.  While both these attack types can succeed in the EMV environment, as normal transactions take place on EMV cards, criminals get less from them than from high tech skimming attacks. The chart below shows an analysis of the overall figures since 2005.