FBI Discovers Water is Wet, ATM Malware Still a Fucking Thing in 2025
Oh for fuck’s sake. The FBI’s finally caught up with what anyone with a functioning brain stem has known since 2010—ATM malware is back and it’s hoovering up cash faster than a management consultant drains a corporate budget. Over twenty million dollars nicked so far this year, according to the G-men’s latest pearl-clutching bulletin. Twenty million. That’s what, one banker’s quarterly cocaine allowance? But sure, let’s all gasp in fucking amazement.
The malware du jour is “Ploutus.D”—sounds like a Greek god of financial arseholery—which lets these digital pikeys turn cash machines into their personal one-armed bandits. They call it “touchless jackpotting,” which is marketing wank for “we’re too bone idle to even stand at the machine while we rob it.” It’s the criminal equivalent of working from home, except they actually deliver results instead of just fiddling with their knobs on Teams calls.
Here’s the beautiful bit: Step one, dress up as a technician. Step two, waltz into a bank with all the scrutiny of a fart in a lift. Step three, shove a USB stick into the ATM because apparently these multi-million-pound money boxes are about as secure as a Windows XP machine at a script kiddie convention. Step four, fuck off home and trigger the cash-fountain remotely while binge-watching Netflix. It’s so piss-simple, I’m amazed users haven’t accidentally done it while trying to charge their fucking iPhones.
The FBI’s little love letter to the banking industry—helpfully marked “TLP:CLEAR” so the whole world can see how catastrophically shit you are—mentions over 100 incidents since January. That’s roughly one a day, for those of you still using your fingers to count. Financial institutions across the US are shitting bricks, which is a marked improvement over their usual output of pure, unadulterated negligence.
And these aren’t just any old smash-and-grab jobs. They’re using Cobalt Strike and fileless malware too, because apparently just stealing money isn’t enough—they want to make the forensics team weep blood as well. It’s a full-spectrum arse-reaming that would make the original BOFH proud, if it wasn’t aimed at such pathetically easy targets. I’m surprised they haven’t just left a Post-it note on the screen saying “GONE FISHING, ATM’S OPEN—HELP YOURSELF.”
Naturally, the FBI’s “recommendations” are the usual horseshite: lock down your systems, monitor for suspicious activity, stop hiring security guards who think ‘firewall’ is something you find in a Vauxhall Corsa. The real advice should be: fire your entire C-suite into the sun, hire someone who knows what a supply chain attack is without having to Google it, and maybe—just fucking maybe—don’t treat cybersecurity like a line item you can skimp on to afford another yacht for the CEO.
But we all know how this shitshow ends. Banks will issue a press release about “taking security seriously,” do precisely fuck-all for six months, then get comprehensively violated again. It’s the circle of life, if the circle was drawn by an incompetent toddler with a crayon and a head injury.
Speaking of which, some luser once called the helpdesk because the ATM in the lobby was “making a grinding noise and smoking slightly.” I told them it was either dispensing cash to a gentleman in Belarus or attempting to achieve sentience after being violated by a bloke with a USB stick and a dream. Turned out it was both. Took the bank three days to find the malware, by which point the machine had shat out enough twenties to fund a small coup. The security footage showed the “technician” had a name badge that read “I.M. A. Thief.” Nobody noticed. Fucking nobody.
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