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A comment on Criminals can guess Visa number and security code in six seconds, experts find. Parent comment

Re:Criminals can guess Visa number and security code in six ... by Mz on Sunday December 04, 2016 @06:00PM (#13102238)
there are only 10⁴ = 10,000 four-digit security codes possible

Yeah, that's not a big number, even manually, much less for a hacker.

I went to school for two months and the TV in my dorm room had been locked down to a few channels by some parental security crap, presumably by a previous occupant. With nothing better to do, I manually went through codes until I found the right one and unlocked it to open up more channels for myself.

It was only intimidating when I was entering random guesses at first. As soon as I decided to just methodically go through all possible combinations, it only took me something like two or three days of doing this when I wasn't in class and was watching TV anyway.

I am so glad I never tried to use BS like that with my own kids.

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Re:Criminals can guess Visa number and security code in six ... by flukus on Monday December 05, 2016 @01:54AM (#13103819)
> Yeah, that's not a big number, even manually, much less for a hacker.

But how many false attempts do you have to make before the suspicious activity is picked up? At one a day you probably aren't going to get it right.

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Re:Criminals can guess Visa number and security code in six ... by Mz on Monday December 05, 2016 @01:25PM (#13107819)
I am not a hacker, but other remarks here have cast light on how hackers do that. Those remarks fit with what I know about fraud from when I processed insurance claims for a living.
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