Security blogger Brian Krebs broke the headline-grabbing story“Gang Used 3D Printers for ATM Skimmers.”

In the blog, Krebs reported that a Texas federal court hadindicted four men for using ATM skimmers crafted via high-tech3D printers to loot some $400,000 from branches of Chase and UnityNational. No credit union is specified in the indictment.

The amount stolen is not especially eye-catching but thetechnology is–and the emergence of 3D printing in the skimmingarsenal just may be a game changer, Ben Knieff, director of productmarketing at financial crime consultancy NICE Actimize, told CreditUnion Times. “3D printers have the ability to produce skimmers veryquickly and inexpensively,” said Knieff. “Lower budget criminalsnow can afford this technology.”

He added, “The technology also will enable criminals to reactvery quickly to any security changes implemented by ATMmanufacturers.”

In the traditional cat and mouse of bank robbers and securitypersonnel, 3D printers just may be a big go-ahead for thecriminals.

And all this just may spell the end of the traditional magstripe card, suggested Knieff.

But, first, the details of the 3D printer explosion.

Price is why they are catching on. Best guesses are that $5,000to $10,000 now will buy a 3D printer capable of producing ATMskimmers.

The money buys proven technology. 3D printing just now isgaining a foothold but is well established technology where aspecialty printer literally prints a three-dimensional object suchas a tree ornament, a child's toy, or–perhaps–an ATM skimmer.

European 3D printer maker iMaterialise has in fact blogged about an order it received last year for what itsengineers decided was a skimmer. It declined the request.

But with lower prices, savvy criminals now can just buy theirown 3D printers, suggested Knieff.

Presently skimmers are readily available at online criminalboutiques, said Knieff ($150 to $300 is a typical price for askimmer, he said), but he envisions a shift to a more bespoke andad hoc manufacturing of skimmers on the fly, using 3D printersrather than the traditional, labor-intensive and lengthy manualmanufacture and/or buying off the shelf units that may requireadditional modification to actually work in the intendedenvironment.

iMaterialise's Franky De Schouwer elaborated on just how a 3Dprinter could impact skimmer manufacturing: “I don't think it wouldbe that difficult to create an ATM skimmer with a 3D printer….Forsomeone like, let's say an industrial designer, it's not harderthan designing any other technical pieces.

“How long it would take to print, depends on the chosentechnology. But looking at the size of the thing [the skimmer], Iwould say you could print that overnight.”

Collect the necessary specs and it would appear to be simple toprint a new skimmer every night.

Knieff admitted that he did not see an easy fix on the part ofATM owners or manufacturers to stop what might become a deluge of3D printer skimmers. His best suggestion is to speed up adoption ofchip and pin cards which, so far, have been relatively immuneto skimmer hijacks. But, he added, that won't happenovernight in the U.S. “You can't see EMV becoming commonplacesooner than five years,” he said. And until then the single bestline of defense against skimmers, said Knieff, is “very low techbut it works. Train your ATM service employees to look forskimmers. This gets amazingly good results.”