Chip-And-PIN Breach: Bluetooth, Burned Hole In Back Of Card Reader
Written by Frank HayesFor those who are arguing that Chip-and-PIN represents the gold standard in card security, there was a cold splash of reality this week. Four fraudsters from London were sentenced to jail for their parts in a nine-month string of thefts that netted almost $1.1 million by tampering with Chip-and-PIN card readers at gas stations. According to a BBC report, the group burned a small hole in the back of each reader and then inserted a memory device and BlueTooth reader that allowed it to capture information and then clone customers’ cards.
One gas station owner saw business drop by 47 percent once customers realized money was being taken from their accounts after visiting the station. The gang’s 29-year-old leader, software engineer Theogenes De Montford, was arrested with information from 35,000 cards on his laptop–7,000 of them from a single gas station.
-Dan Stiel
June 24th, 2010 at 9:13 am
To be fair, Chip and PIN was not breached. The mag stripe was cloned.
The only reason their cards have mag stripes is so they can be used in third-world countries that don’t have chip and PIN terminals, such as the United States.