Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere

Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere by pmontra on Monday July 25, 2016 @05:12AM (#12157395)

Maybe it's the same in Europe. I have Italian credit cards with PINs (one even contactless, no choice). I don't remember the PINs because it's chip and signature everywhere I've been, even outside Italy. It's very rare that somebody asks me for a PIN. I say that I'll sign and it's OK.

Contactless, no thanks, I don't want somebody to swipe my purse without me knowing and as far as I googled it's not clear that Faraday bags really work. Contactless passports too.

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Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere by gambiting on Monday July 25, 2016 @05:28AM (#12157461)

I literally would close my account if the bank didn't offer contactless. It's so much better. To answer your concern - the only way for anyone to "swipe" your purse is to have an authorized, authenticated terminal which can communicate with your card using the proper key from the bank - which means that the terminal would get invalidated by the bank straight away after people started reporting fraud. Contactless cards literally won't surrender their information to regular NFC readers. But even assuming they could - the most you can be charged is relatively small amount, and only 5x a day until you have to type in your pin - and if that happened your bank would refund you instantly. So seriously, I can't imagine not having a contactless card.

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Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere by oarsinsync on Monday July 25, 2016 @06:28AM (#12157688)

Unfortunately that's only true until the next vulnerability that allows theft via NFC on a mobile device. There has already been one, there will almost certainly be another.

http://www.securityweek.com/contactless-visa-cards-vulnerabl...

> "With just a mobile phone we created a PoS terminal that could read a card through a wallet," said Martin Emms, lead researcher on the project. "All the checks are carried out on the card rather than the terminal so at the point of transaction, there is nothing to raise suspicions. By pre-setting the amount you want to transfer, you can bump your mobile against someone’s pocket or swipe your phone over a wallet left on a table and approve a transaction. In our tests, it took less than a second for the transaction to be approved."

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Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere by gambiting on Monday July 25, 2016 @06:32AM (#12157706)

Absolutely - but that still flags a terminal for review and will get it blocked. There does not exist any vulnerability that would allow you to clone NFC cards, which has the biggest potential for abuse. And again, even then - contactless cannot be used to take out any cash, so it's not an attractive target for thieves. What are they going to buy with a cloned NFC card(if they could get one)? Lunch?

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Re:Why You Still Can’t Use a Chip Card Everywhere by feintruled on Monday July 25, 2016 @05:24AM (#12157440)

Your fears are mostly unwarranted. Even if they could get close enough to clone your card (and their are cryptographic safeguards that make this difficult) they would be able to do a limited number of transactions before it asked for the PIN (which can not be read directly from the card, so they should not know this).

Then, when you tried to use your legit card, the on-card transaction count would clash and the card and clones would be frozen. You, as the obvious owner of the card, would be free of all liabilty and due a refund (the bank would not kick up a fuss about this, it is in their interest to reduce friction in these low amount cases to drive technology adoption).

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