Forest Global Training Partners

Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Detecting Cloned Cards at the ATM, Register

Summary: Researchers at the University of Florida found that account data on legitimate cards is written by automated, quality-controlled equipment in uniform patterns, while cloned cards made by hand with inexpensive encoders show far more variance, or jitter, in bit placement on the stripe. In a trial with Walmart, their detection technology distinguished legitimate gift cards from clones with up to 99.3 percent accuracy, and tests indicated it could detect cloned bank cards with virtually zero false positives.

What you should know: The FBI estimates roughly $130 billion in gift cards are sold each year, and thieves can record a card's serial number and PIN in-store, wait for an unwitting shopper to activate it, then encode the data onto any magnetic-stripe card and drain the funds. Traynor said ATM owners have little incentive to pay for upgrades because counterfeiting losses are mostly assumed by consumers and financial institutions.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
Related