Chip-and-Pin Vulnerable To Subtle Trickery

An anonymous reader writes "Cambridge University researchers, in an investigation for BBC Television's Watchdog programme, have demonstrated a man-in-the-middle attack for the chip-and-pin credit card security system used throughout the UK and Europe. In the attack, the card is inserted into a card-reader that has been tampered with, and the information transmitted in real-time to an accomplice who uses a specially modified card to make a higher-value purchase elsewhere. The modified card-reader shows only the expected amount, but the larger amount is deducted from the victim's bank account. It would not be easy to use this method in practice because the two transactions must be made simultaneously. The same team recently demonstrated a hacked chip-and-pin terminal playing Tetris."

Comments

'Watchdog' tonight

[shrykk]

This is due to be on 'Watchdog' (a popular consumers'-rights show) in about 45 minutes.

As I understand it, the point of this research is that the banks have been claiming that chip-and-pin terminals are completely tamper-proof. In fact, they may be tamper-proof from the banks' point of view (preventing fraudulent transactions by destroying encryption keys if the case is tampered with), they're not from the customers' point of view - a dodgy establishment or criminal employee could clone your card with a terminal that looks legit.

So, ripping out the innards and putting a machine playing Tetris inside looks silly, but demonstrates that the devices aren't inherently trustworthy. And this is the next step: showing that a card can be cloned and the details used to make a fraudulent transaction using modified hardware.