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A comment on Square now in Japan. Parent comment

Re:Square now in Japan by samwillis on Thursday May 23, 2013 @07:38AM (#5756260)
Yes, if the pin number is entered into the software running on the phone then that software can easily be changed to log people pin numbers.
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Re:Square now in Japan by anxx on Thursday May 23, 2013 @01:31PM (#5758104)
True, but eventually the hardware PIN has to become a software PIN that will be transmitted. Why is it more difficult to sniff out hardware PINs?
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Re:Square now in Japan by lawtguy on Thursday May 23, 2013 @07:59PM (#5760366)
The PIN is only transmitted to the chip embedded in the card. If the PIN matches, the smart card chip authorizes the transaction. So the PIN is never transmitted to the card processor, just the authorization message from the card. They only allow specialized tamper-proof terminals for Chip and PIN cards as that's the only place you could sniff the PIN.
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