How safe is our credit card information? Check this out:
An encryption code used to protect billions of credit cards, subway passes and security badges is safe no more.
A University of Virginia graduate student and two fellow hackers say they have cracked the code used for tiny chips found inside many “smartcards” with readily available equipment that cost less than $1,000.
Twenty-six-year-old Karsten Nohl and his two German partners dismantled the chip and mapped out its secret security algorithm. They ran the formula through a computer program and broke the encryption after a few hours.
“I don’t want to help attackers, but I want to inform people about the vulnerabilities of these cards,” said Nohl, a Ph.D. candidate in computer engineering at U.Va. who is originally from Germany
The wireless chips found inside credit cards, car keys, security keycards and subway passes use technology known as radio-frequency identification. Cracking the code would allow a criminal to clone credit cards, get free subway rides, gain access to buildings or steal cars.
Nohl and his colleagues announced their findings at the Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin, an annual worldwide convention of hackers.
Read remainder of article HERE
Loading ...
Mandela turns 92
Haiti Housing
I’m not surprised. Everytime we think we’ve ‘built a better mousetrap’ it seems we learn we have a better mouse whose ahead of the game. I realized last month that our cards aren’t even safe that the stores we use them in. I used mine at a popular chain restaurant last month and waited nearly 15 minutes for the server to return with my card and my receipt for me to sign and the manager came over apologizing that the server lost my card. I’m like how did that happen when he was only supposed to go to the podium that was in plain view and swipe it, wait for the receipt to print and come back to the table? Of course there was no explanation and my meal was on the house. The card was eventually found, but I still called and canceled it and got a fraud on my credit reports to alert me of anything suspicious.