Hand me your PIN!

10.11.2021

"Hand Me Your PIN! Inferring ATM PINs of Users Typing with a Covered Hand" is the title of a research paper realized by the Security and Privacy Research Group (SPRITZ) of the University of Padua coordinated by Professor Mauro Conti, the Delft University of Technology and GFT Italia.

The study investigated how safe it is to type your pin code at the bank ATM by covering it with your other hand.
After making a replica of an ATM, researchers trained some artificial intelligence models on videos of users entering PINs by covering the hand typing it. The study showed that artificial intelligence can correctly reconstruct 30% of 5-digit PINs and 41% of 4-digit PINs within three attempts.
Researchers have also shown how artificial intelligence achieves 5 times higher performance.

Although ATMs have evolved in technology, PINs still remain the most common authentication method for these devices, and ATMs are still the most widely used system for cash withdrawals. In 2019 the ECB reported over 11 billion withdrawal and deposit transactions that took place at European ATMs.