French Banks Offer Credit Card Numbers That Change Every Hour (thememo.com)

Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes The Memo: What if the numbers on your card changed every hour so that, even if a fraudster copied them, they'd quickly be out of date? That's exactly what two French banks are starting to do with their new high-tech ebank cards... The three digits on the back of this card will change, every hour, for three years. And after they change, the previous three digits are essentially worthless, and that's a huge blow for criminals... As most fraud happens a few hours or days after your card details are actually taken, this would leave criminals essentially with a bunch of useless numbers.
It's just like credit cards you have now -- other than the tiny digital screen that's embedded into the back of the card.

Comments

Magnetic strip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do French credit cards still support magnetic strip transactions? Is that invalidated? Every time my card's details have been stolen it's because I used it while travelling in the US (I live in Canada; I travel to the US once, sometimes twice a year; I've had a card stolen three times in the last three years), and someone has tried to withdraw money from an ATM using a strip transaction. These transactions never involve the three numbers on the back.

Will this break regularly scheduled withdrawals for automated billing?

Re:Magnetic strip?

[Anonymous Coward]

the changing numbers solve a different problem

using them online when no chip and pin transaction is possible

Re:Magnetic strip?

[gweihir]

Will this break regularly scheduled withdrawals for automated billing?

No. First, in Europe, these are _not_ done via credit-card, but via interbank-transfer. Not everybody is stuck in the banking dark-ages like the US. Second, for credit-card based schemes, you authenticate once and then the bank knows these are legit and it works without further authentication.

Re:Magnetic strip?

[Dahamma]

The US now uses chip cards as well (though there are some retailers still using swipe, which is now officially retailer's responsibility to pay for fraud in that case) - this has NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT.

It's not really related to online purchases, but since you don't seem to know much about this... chip and pin vs chip and signature comes down to one thing: a 2nd factor authentication. For IN PERSON retail transactions, the "chip" basically means a CC# (which is all the mag stripe really provided) is no longer enough, now the CC# is only accepted from a valid card passing a cryptographic check. That's the first factor: "something you have".

But if your card is stolen, it comes down to the 2nd factor. For chip and pin, that 2nd factor is "something you know". For chip and signature, it's really closer to "something you are" (biometric). Problem is, the "biometric" signature is pretty easily fooled, and the current verification (in theory could be a computer, but in reality is some totally untrained clerk/waiter/etc who has no clue how to validate it) is absurd.

Summary, it, the chip and pin solution is designed to make it genuinely harder to use a stolen CC, and the chip and signature is designed to make it harder to counterfeit a CC - while making sure it's NOT harder to use it. Basically, the US solution is designed to make sure the banks are covered and the consumers won't stop using credit cards - while not providing any added benefit to CONSUMERS who had their card stolen.

That gets us to online purchases. First, fairly obviously, both chip and pin and chip and signature fail here. CVV was a minor attmept to fix this, but (1) it does nothing to prevent physical credit card theft since it's PRINTED ON THE CARD (useless 2 factor) and (2) it's not actually required by many credit card processing services so there's always a way to get around it.

You'd think given the size of this industry the various actors involved (VISA, MC, banks, retailers, etc) would be smart enough to know all of this and find a good solution? Well, yes, of course they are, and have put much more thought into it than my simplistic summary. But the key point is they don't WANT to fix it, since it turns out they realized any current fixes that would mostly solve the problem would also inconvenience customers and retailers/POS just enough that it might bring revenue gains below fraud losses. Plus, fraud is tax deductible. And, customers and retailers aren't always well informed, so hey, some of the time they just get screwed and lose without even reporting the fraud. All good for the banks and CC companies!

Re:Magnetic strip?

[GuB-42]

What's up with this "freedom" propaganda in the US?
In most of the freedom indices, the US is unremarkable compared to other western countries. It is not bad, but among these countries, only the US seem to brag about it so much. I suppose it is some kind of political strategy to justify anything.

Re:Magnetic strip?

[arth1]

You do know that bank transfers are not a europe specific thing :)

I just bought something and the payment was divided in 3 equal payments... on multiple occasion, I don't personally want to give my bank information each time I make such a purchase. It creates a more serious problem, as if you give your bank information to each merchant for that kind of transaction then you have in effect recreated the same problem with your bank account.

The big difference is that bank transfers in Europe are payer initiated, while in the US, they are payee initiated.
In Europe, there is generally no problems giving out your bank account details, because all you can do with that information is to send payments to the account.

Re:Magnetic strip?

[AmiMoJo]

The UK has largely moved away from the branch model now. The UK also allows some limited payee initiated transfers, in the form of Direct Debits. They are good for paying bills and the like, you agree to let the payee set the amount every time (to cover things like phone bills that can vary) and you have to right to cancel or reverse any payment without question.

The way to do it

[Okian Warrior]

This seems like a misguided solution to the problem. If someone steals the card, then this feature won't help.

Bruce Schneier pointed out the real solution years ago. If your card has some processing power and a display (which this solution has), just add a keypad (similar to a calculator in credit-card size).

The keypad is for a pin. The owner keys in the pin, the card generates a one-time-use credit card number, and the waiter/salesman can take the card to the back and swipe it or whatever. When the card is lost, the thieves won't know the pin. If the number is copied, it can't be used beyond the first sale.

You can even use this on a computer peripheral. The software on the card is fixed and can't be hacked.

Multiple accounts can be stored on one card, so you only need one card instead of multiple credit cards in your wallet.

Of course, the thieves can kidnap the owner, but that's not the problem this addresses.

A smart card with pin on the card prevents all kinds of copying, skimming, lost cards, even online accounts.

Since we're switching to smart cards, I don't know why we simply haven't switched to the final solution.

Re:The way to do it

[newcastlejon]

Also, chip+pin does nothing to help with online sales, or any sales where they simply choose not to use a chip+pin transaction. Someone can copy down your card number and expiration date and make transactions.

If you RTFS* you'd see that the card number isn't what changes, it's the CVV2 code on the back of the card. For a long time you've needed these three digits for any "customer not present" transactions (phone or online orders), so just writing down the card number isn't nearly as big a risk as it was in the past.

What this new card does makes it very difficult to do are CNP transactions without having the card physically present; scammers could copy the details but they'd only be good for an hour at most, and most merchants would be wary of dispatching goods to somewhere other than the billing address at least for the first time they're provided with that card's details.

*Easily forgiven when the headline gets it wrong too.

privacy.com does better

[junk]

I have no affiliation to privacy.com other than being a user.

I've been using privacy.com to generate randomized credit card numbers for a while now. It's the same type of thing we had in the 90s with certain credit card companies but better. I have static cards with monthly limits for recurring charges, static cards with max per transaction limits for online merchants I frequent and one time use burner cards for just about everything else. I can see all declined transactions per card, which lets me track it down to a merchant. It's the same thing I do for email (per account email addresses for spam tracking) but better because I don't have to manage it myself.