<story><title>X-Ray Scans Expose Chip-And-Pin Card Hack</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2015/10/x-ray-scans-expose-an-ingenious-chip-and-pin-card-hack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ajross</author><text>FTA: &lt;i&gt;A fraudulent chip can listen for that query and pre-empt the real chip with its own answer: a “yes” signal regardless of whatever random PIN the fraudster has entered. “The attacker intercepts the PIN query and replies that it’s correct, whatever the code is,”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait, what?  How is that the protocol?  There&amp;#x27;s no two way validation at all?  The chip just says &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;?!&lt;p&gt;Can anyone with knowledge of details confirm?  This seems isomorphic to my ears with &amp;quot;the PIN is just security theater&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bravo22</author><text>In this case the fault lies with the bank. The chip can authenticate the transaction and also optionally cryptographically sign it as verified. The bank should check the last step but most&amp;#x2F;some don&amp;#x27;t because a lot of the first wave of terminals that went out didn&amp;#x27;t have full&amp;#x2F;proper implementation, therefore they only relied on the chip saying &amp;quot;yeah it looks good&amp;quot;, instead of &amp;quot;yeah it looks good, btw here is my signature on this transaction which you can pass to the bank to verify that it really is kosher&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;So it is more an issue of the bank accepting partially verified transactions on large dollar amounts.</text></comment>
<story><title>X-Ray Scans Expose Chip-And-Pin Card Hack</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2015/10/x-ray-scans-expose-an-ingenious-chip-and-pin-card-hack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ajross</author><text>FTA: &lt;i&gt;A fraudulent chip can listen for that query and pre-empt the real chip with its own answer: a “yes” signal regardless of whatever random PIN the fraudster has entered. “The attacker intercepts the PIN query and replies that it’s correct, whatever the code is,”&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wait, what?  How is that the protocol?  There&amp;#x27;s no two way validation at all?  The chip just says &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;?!&lt;p&gt;Can anyone with knowledge of details confirm?  This seems isomorphic to my ears with &amp;quot;the PIN is just security theater&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thrownaway2424</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with the smart card system and the crypto protocols developed around them.  The problem is that the applications that have been bodged onto the smart card since it was invented (in the 70s) have all been garbage.  The banks and payment networks just aren&amp;#x27;t qualified to implement these things, and they don&amp;#x27;t have any reason to because they&amp;#x27;ve managed to externalize the cost of fraud onto the individual customers and the merchants.</text></comment>