I had some time on my hands and decided to buy a used Bitcoin ATM and see how it ticked, and if we could re-purpose it for an ATM as a teaching tool.
By they way, I may use DCM, BTM, and ATM interchangeably in this write-up. DCM is a digital currency machine, BTM is a Bitcoin Teller Machine, and ATM is an Automated Teller Machine.
Coin Cloud was a company that had over 4,000 DCM machines around the US until 2023/4 when it folded and went bankrupt. A lot of the machines were brought back to Las Vegas and are being sold in bulk, but many were left at the stores they were installed and given to the owner in recompense for money owed for site rent. The one we got was one of these leftover machines.
It boots up and displays the original BTM software and displays the current price at 1/1000th of a Bitcoin with their fees embedded. The going rate of Bitcoin at this time was approximately $85,000 and they were selling 1/1000th of a Bitcoin for $104 that was selling in exchanges for $85 for a 22% markup – yikes.
But with the fees the company had to pay that included capex on the machine, insurance, money transmission licenses, armored car/armed guard money pick-up, site rent, their own cost of capital, this would have been a capital intensive business to keep running month to month. And with my perception of Bitcoin ATM’s being a low transaction volume type of business, the math just doesn’t work out to be a solvent company.
First things first – we need to get into this machine. No pin numbers for the SG A-series keypad audit lock. No way to open this safe door without a little damage. I had to call a locksmith.
I’m glad I chose to do this instead of attempting it myself. James had the experience to understand how the lock catches worked – and he had a pin hole camera on a cable that allowed him to see in the cabinet and better estimate where to drill the locks. There are two doors and two locks to get through. And this left two holes that we will cover and repair afterwards.
These are the two locks that will need to be replaced.
This is the lower door drilled lock hole, and the hidden door to open the front panel for access.
This is the damage for the upper door drilled lock.
Not too bad.
Sadly, no money in the cash box.
I had tried scanning the network on the system but it was hardened pretty well. It did not respond to any port scans when I used Kali’s many tools. So I figured I could brute force my way in once I got physical access to the PC.
The PC is a linux based Intel NUC.
The BIOS setup has a security login and password set. I didn’t try very long but could not get in, but I was able to set boot access to my Kali live boot usb stick, and got access to the drives.
It has 4 partitions. One each for the O/S, the database, logs, and the application.
I will use a variety of forensic tools to explore the drives. More on that next time…
BB
Part 2 Preview- The PC
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