Society of Payment Security Professionals - Payment Security Blog

Chip and PIN: attacks or risks?

Ed posts about a reference to Chip and PIN attacks that I feel are actually just risks. The story gets talked about because they associate the words “attack” and “Chip and PIN” making people think there is an actual weakness in the chip on the card.

The story is actually referring to the fact that a Chip and PIN card still has a magnetic stripe across the back of the card for international and backwards compatibility. This means that if someone skims the track data and watches the PIN being entered, as seen in these videos, then someone could “clone” the card… but not really, because they cannot clone the chip information.

There is risk in everything including credit card transactions. Personally I am happy that Chip and PIN is taking over instead of signatures as the form of authentication.