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News

of our industry leading ATM processing business de-
mands our clear focus and full attention," Leehy said.

In the 50 years since they first began to appear at U.S.
banks and grocery stores for cash access, ATMs have
become central to banking and payments. And in-
creasing numbers of the devices now can handle much
more than just dispensing cash. New and evolving
uses include mobile and prepaid card top-ups, ticket-
ing, money transfers, check cashing, utility payments,
statements and other self-service activities.

Petro retailers

'low-hanging fruit' in

Verifone intrusion

lobal technology giant Verifone Systems
Inc. confirmed reports of an illegal entry
into its corporate intranet. The intrusion,
G detected in January 2017, may have affected
about 24 gas station convenience stores, the company
stated. Security analyst Brian Krebs disclosed the inci-
dent March 7, 2017, in a blog post on KrebsonSecurity.
com. The story was immediately picked up by other
news outlets, including Fortune, Reuters and Business
Insider.

Krebs believes a phishing email may have precipitated
the attack. When the company's IT department detect-
ed the intrusion in January, it limited end-user capabil-
ities on desktops and laptops and directed employees
to change their company passwords. Verifone employ-
ees were also permanently banned from downloading
and installing software, Krebs noted.

Addressing the issues
Krebs also observed U.S. pay-at-the-pump retailers
will be among the last to migrate from magnetic stripe
readers to more secure EMV (Europay, Mastercard and
Visa) technology. In December 2016, Mastercard and
Visa agreed to extend the liability shift deadline from
Oct. 1, 2017, to Oct. 1, 2020, due to the great expense and
complexity of the requisite system-wide upgrades.

The extension makes the segment "low-hanging fruit"
for fraudsters, Krebs stated. "Now that [pay-at-the-
pump retailers] have another three years to get it done,
thieves will continue to attack fuel station dispensers
and other unattended terminals with skimmers and by
attacking point-of-sale terminal hardware makers, in-
tegrators and resellers," he wrote.

Thirty-five-year-old Verifone has approximately 30
million devices deployed across 150 countries. "Veri-
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