A Chip In Every Card

EMV Cards, short for "Europay, Mastercard and Visa" are expected to be the standard in the US by the end of 2015. While other countries have used the more expensive cards for years, the US is just now implementing them. After growing fraud attacks on US based cards solely because they don't have this protection.

EMV cards are different from magnetic strip cards in that they create a unique transaction code per purchase and is unusable for any other transactions, so if the information was hacked from a specific point of sale the hackers would not be able to duplicate the card. 

They work different too, not only can you swipe, but on new registers the card will read the electronic information by "dipping" it in the terminal where it will be processed. There will also be "near field communication" where just placing the card near the terminal will process the transaction, similar to mobile app payments on cell phones. As with regular credit cards you will need to sign or enter a pin, whichever is linked to your EMV card, so you will still have to keep up that penmanship for your John Hancock.

Though they are safer than swipe credit cards, there have been some concerns over the vulnerabilities of the cards security .Using a smart phone or laptop, a hacker can simulate the registers terminal, and with the "near field communication" hold the laptop or phone near a wallet of an unsuspecting victim and with current loopholes can attempt a contract-less authorization of up to 1 million dollars.

You will be seeing these (if you haven't already got one) becoming more and more prevalent in 2015. For more information on EMV Vulnerabilities check out:

lightbluetouchpaper.org


Until next time happy computing,

Christopher Hines
Wooster Tech Services, LTD