Hackers scan bank cards through clothing

January 30, 2012

Shmoocon hackers showed over the weekend that with the conveniences that come from moving toward a more digital world, also come new vulnerabilities waiting to be exploited.

Saturday, Kristin Paget, chief Hacker for Recursion Ventures, a consulting and development company, showed in a live demonstration that security features for contactless payment cards can be exploited relatively cheaply and easily.

Over the past few years, companies have been adding a feature to payment cards that allows purchasers to “wave” the card over an RFID reader instead of swiping them in a machine. High profile busts of credit card fraud rings and the increased awareness of ATM skimmers may lead people to feel that contactless features are safer, but that’s a false sense of security, Paget says. “The industry would like you to believe that these cards are secure, but contactless transactions actually have less security,” she said.

The new “pay pass” feature available on credit cards makes it that much easier for even a novice hacker to swipe a person’s credit card information without them ever having to pull it out. Read more