One SIM card vulnerability and a few hacks later, the potentially fatal remote takeover flaw went from being a theoretical attack to a plausible threat.
Fraud experts say that hackers often steal personal data and make multiple small charges to validate a card, probe its vulnerability and test the vigilance of a cardholder before making bigger charges.
On Jan . 23 Citigroup dropped their price target for MasterCard to $110, citing the card issuer's vulnerability to slowing consumer spending.
The groups have been going where the money is — breaking into websites using known server vulnerabilities, injecting card payment skimming code and siphoning off credit card numbers, names and security codes on an attacker-controlled server, often for months at a time.
It did say that personal data had not been compromised, leading some experts to suggest that the fraudsters had gained debit card details, or found a vulnerability in its app.
Card Shimming is not a vulnerability with a chip card, nor with an ATM, and therefore it is not necessary to add protection mechanisms against this form of attack to the ATM".
You generally have 60 days to dispute a charge, but the earlier you catch it, the less likely the bad guys (or gals) will catch on to the vulnerability of your card info.
The card would also sidestep the main vulnerability in the electronic networking of records: the threat to privacy.
The I.B.M. researchers' report also offers advice to the smart card industry on how to protect against vulnerabilities.
But now software vulnerabilities — as with stolen credit-card numbers and spammable e-mail addresses — carry real financial value.
