Slashdot Mirror
Chip & PIN terminal playing Tetris
Fearful Bank Customer writes "When British banks introduced the Chip-and-Pin smartcard-based debit and credit card system three years ago, they assured the public it was impervious to fraud. However, the EMV protocol it's based on requires customers to type their bank account pin number into store terminals in order to make any purchase. Security researchers at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory derided the system as insecure at the time, as it gave access to customer's bank account pin numbers to every store they bought from. Despite these objections, the system was deployed, so researchers Steven Murdoch and Saar Drimer recently modified a straight-off-e-bay chip-and-pin terminal to play Tetris, with a video on YouTube, demonstrating that devices are neither tamper-resistant nor tamper-evident, and that even students with a spare weekend can take control of them. The banks are claiming that this can be reproduced only "in the laboratory" but seem to have missed the point: if customers have to type their bank account pin into every device they see, then the bad guys can capture both critical card information *and* the pin number for the bank account, leaving customers even more vulnerable than they were under the old system."
But if someone can put custom electronics in what is supposed to be a tamper-proof shell, people will blindly insert their cards and type their PINs. The issue is not one of terminal software security, but of hardware integrity.
What annoyed me was the shift in liability. The old fashioned "swipe and sign" cards, if they were compromised and somebody nicked your cash then the banks could be held liable and some remittance sought. However - with the new system there is an automatic assumption that you have given your PIN away and hence its your fault and you can he held liable. So if somebody stands behind you, watches you type in your PIN and then follows you outside, mugs you and steals your card - then you can be held liable for not taking care of your PIN number. Also the system seems quite unreliable even now.