Fraudsters, like the businesses they prey upon, never stop innovating. A new innovation in ATM card skimming was recently discovered in Mexico:
“The wily ATM hackers are at it again with a new form of card data gathering system, a “shimmer.” These super-thin card readers slide right into the card slot and are technically invisible unless you go poking around inside the ATM.
This shimmer was found in Mexico and it is unclear if it was connected to a PIN pad camera or other hardware. What’s special about this unit is that it can read data stored on the card’s chip. The hackers are storing the data transmitted via the chip, thus enabling them to reuse the card data to clone both the chip and the magnetic strip.”
Using cloned data from a chip card is a little bit more complex than using data stolen from a mag-stripe, but clearly fraudsters are comfortable dealing with a few more challenges if it will keep them in business.
Overview by Alex Johnson, Sr. Analyst, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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