A malicious ATM machine put up in the conference center of Las Vegas' Riviera Hotel Casino, by criminals running an ATM card-scanning scam, was uncovered by security experts assembled at the hotel for the DefCon hacker conference.

The ATM, which apparently looked like a real working system, actually scanned the card information as well as recorded the PIN numbers the unsuspecting users entered after putting their cards in the machine. Placed right outside the hotel's security office, the fake ATM machine was positioned in such a way that it completely evaded the surveillance cameras installed in the hotel.

Going by the information provided by a senior conference organizer who identified himself as Priest, it was likely put up for capturing data from the hackers who were to attend the DefCon hacker conference. However, the criminals were probably not aware that the malicious ATM was being installed in a hotel that was soon going to be swarmed by over 8,000 security professionals.

Elaborating further, Priest said after some attendees of the conference noticed that the ATM was "not quite right. They looked at the screen where there would normally be a camera. It was a little bit too dark, so someone shined a flashlight in there and there was a PC!"

The fake machine was then seized by the security authorities.