From SCDigest's OnTarget e-Magazine
- June 12, 2013 -
RFID and AIDC News: Local TV News Report Shows Just How Easy it Is to Capture RFID Credit Card Data
Simply Bring a Reader Near a Credit Card, Grab Holder Name, Card Number, Expiration Date and More; Are Banks Not Being Straight with Consumers?
SCDigest Editorial Staff
It's not exactly supply chain related, but we were interested enough in recent investigative report by Eye Witness News 4, the local NBC affiliate in Albuquerque, NM, on just how easy it really is to get detailed credit card information from cards with embedded RFID chips.
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| Though using volunteers here, it is obvious that it would be trivial to surreptitiously do the same thing to anyone by just getting into proximity to a person in a crowded environment.
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What Do You Say?
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That even as credit card companies and banks tell consumers their data is safe.
Channel 4 brought in Walt Augustinowicz, founder and CEO of Florida-based company Identity Stronghold, which makes a variety of products to protect consumers against such hacks, such as wallets and sleeves that block RFID signals, to demonstrate how easy it really is.
In recent years, many credit card companies have started to embed RFID tags into the physical cards. Store associates then simply need to wave the card past an RFID reader to collect the credit card information, a somewhat easier process than running the card through a magnetic stripe reader. Mag stripe reads also often seem to fail due to stripe damage or other factors, and require numerous passes and/or manually entering the numbers.
Those RFID-tagged cards have led to concerns about consumers movements in store being tracked as they shop, and also of course the potential for identity theft of the credit card information. Hence the rise of a number of companies such as Identity Stronghold that offer protective devices for the cards.
Augustinowicz took Channel 4 reporters both to the "old town" area of Albuquerque and then later to the airport to demonstrate that the card companies' claims of security do not be valid.
For this test, he used only willing volunteers, bringing a small laptop within a few inches of each person's wallet or purse.
Early on in the video report, which can be found here, Augustinowicz passes the leather covered laptop passed a woman's purse, and zap, on his computer screen is the woman's name, credit card number, expiration date, the fact that she cannot use the card to acquire cash, and other details.
He repeats the process numerous times both in town and at the airport, always to the astonishment of the participant.
An Increasing Number of Credit Cards Now Contain Embedded Passive RFID Chips
(RFID and AIDC Story Continued Below)
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