A devious piece of criminal coding that has been quietly at work in a clutch of ATMs at banks in Russia and Ukraine has recently been discovered. It allows a gang member to walk up to an ATM, insert a "trigger" card, and use the machine's receipt printer to produce a list of all the debit card numbers used that day, including the cards' start and expiration dates, as well as the PINs associated with those cards.

Everything needed to clone the cards and access consumer bank accounts is included on the receipt. The software is the latest move in a security arms race, after banks and consumers got wise to the fitting of fake fascias on ATMs.

Across Europe, losses due to such ATM skimming fraud grew 11 percent to €484 million in 2008, according to the European ATM Security Team, which is funded by the European Union and based in Edinburgh, Scotland.