Smart Phone Thermal Camera Used by Thieves

Technology can obviously bring huge benefits to society as a whole, but sometimes it can work the wrong way – at least when it’s in the wrong hands.  Which is unfortunately the case with the amazing little gadget that has been recently released which works with the iPhone 5.

It’s called the FLIR ONE and it’s one of the wonderful little devices that you desperately want to have but just have to work out a justification for buying one. It’s basically a device which can turn your iPhone into a fully fledged infrared personal thermal image camera.  So instead to trying to explain that, a picture will probably demonstrate exactly what it does.

As can be seen you simply point it and you can see all the different temperatures of everything around you.  It basically works by detecting the wavelength of infra red light being reflected, this varies with the temperature and so the FLIR ONE is able to detect the relative temperatures and display or take photos of them.

It’s pretty neat, but unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view). it has a rather impressive criminal potential, which maybe already being exploited.  You see this device if pointed at an ATM machine has the potential to identify the relative temperatures of the keys on the machine.   This temperature is of course caused by the fingers of the person who used the machine last.  Hence it can be used to identity the key presses that constitute your PIN number from the residual heat from your fingers.

There have already been demonstrations of how this might work, but it always involved large clunky infra red equipment, which would be rather difficult to conceal.  But imagine how much easier it is to just queue up behind people and then simply take a quick thermal photo before moving on.

Of course, they still need your card to actually be able to steal your cash, but the technology for that has been around for years certainly in the murkier areas of the web and the Darknet.  All you need if a $50 RFID reader and a $300 card magnetizing device and you have everything you need to steal and clone a card details from anyone nearby carrying an RFID enabled card.

So there you are a complete kit for creating a duplicate card and stealing the PIN number all for about $750. What’s worse it involves little technical knowledge and all the gear can fit into a small bag !!!