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Philippine banks must replace ATMs, cards

August 13, 2013

Banks were ordered Tuesday to replace existing automated teller machine cards and machines with new ones between 2015 and 2017 in an effort to curb hacking incidents involving ATMs.

The mandate was prompted by a rash of hacking attacks that have resulted in the loss of millions of pesos, an article by The Phillipine Star said. 

To prevent what he called "brute force attacks," BSP deputy governor Nestor Espenilla said that industry stakeholders have agreed to a solution that will result in the replacement of 12,000 ATMs nationwide. The new machines will support 3DES, which encrypts data three times in the machine instead of just once.

"A 3DES has key length of 168 bits which makes it harder to crack," Espenilla said.

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