How safe is your ATM PIN? | Tamil | LMES - YouTube

Gone are those days when we had to travel to a nearby town/city in order to withdraw money from our bank accounts waiting on long queues

Thanks to industrialization and economic development, we do have ATM machines even in small villages today

In fact, these days banks provide us with an ATM card and its secret PIN at the time account is opened

In today's fast moving world, can we be absolutely positive about securing our ATM PIN against theft? I strongly doubt that

3 research scientists working at the University of California published a paper named "The Heat of Momentum"

In this paper, they have made strong claims based on concrete evidences stating ATM PINs can be stolen easily

In 2014, a person named Mark Rober adopted this idea as is and demonstrated it by stealing people's ATM PINs from shopping centers

If you would like to know how ATM PINs are compromised and want to secure your's from getting stolen, just follow me to a store to understand how it works

See this person in front of me swiping her card and entering her 4 digit secret PIN to complete the payment

I don't know the PIN she entered on the machine nor did I see it

Now when my turn comes to ring my items, I move to the counter, hover my phone over the PIN machine and do a click. That's it !

I have found out the secret PIN entered by the previous customer. Eager to know how?

Let's understand it through a simple experiment

I was reading one of these 3 books around 30 seconds back. Looking at them using our naked eye, we won't be able to tell which one was I reading.

Imagine if we had the ability to see infrared light i.e., heat energy

In that case, all these books would appear way differently to us and we will be able to easily identify that book which I was reading a while ago

Even though we can't see infrared light, we have developed technology to observe it through cameras which are even available on mobile phones today

Let's say, I place my hands over a wall nearby. Temperature increases at this point of contact on the wall.

If I observe this wall using an infrared camera then I'll be able to easily find out the spot where I had placed my hands before.

Let's first understand why temperature increased at the spot where I touched.

Take two objects where one has a higher temperature than the other. Keep them together in contact.

At this time, heat energy flows from the object with higher temperature to the one with lower temperature till both the objects reach to the same temperature.

This point, when both objects reach the same temperature is called thermal equilibrium.

Now when we think about the card machine example, we should get a fair idea on how vulnerable is the secret PIN.

When we enter our PIN, as per the law of thermal equilibrium, heat energy transfers from our hands to the buttons.

Therefore, the buttons we touched will have a higher temperature than the ones we didn't.

And now when we observe the keypad using a thermal imaging camera, we will be able to find the PIN easily.

In fact, we could even find out the order in which the buttons were pressed easily. Are you wondering how?

The button that was pressed first will have a lower temperature than the second and so on. Isn't it?

This difference appears evident while observing the keypad using a thermal imaging camera further exposing the order of the keystroke

The good news is, if the buttons are made of metal then thieves can't steal our PIN so easily as opposed to plastic because...

thermal conductivity of metal is much more higher than plastic and hence, heat spreads so fast leaving no thermal signature on the buttons

So to avoid compromising your PIN this way, do remember to touch all the buttons on the keypad after you enter the PIN

When we do this, heat from our fingers transfer to all the buttons and while observed using an infrared camera all of them show the pattern giving no clue to the observer

Please protect yourself from such thefts and also kindly spread the awareness to your friends and relatives

Are you curious to learn how thermal imaging cameras work? I will explain it through another video in the future.

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