Can someone explain to me how a really smart hacker hasn’t figured out a way to design a chip for a card like a prepaid visa that tells the machine reading it that it always has money on it? Sorry if this sounds silly but the chip cards have information on them can that information not be hacked or edited? Or can they not have a machine like the bank uses to program your card but program it to be unlimited?
Thanks.
In: 6
As many already suggested, very often the chip doesn’t contain any information about the amount of money in someones bank account. It only contains information needed to authorise a transaction.
However, there are many different architectures and sometimes, there is an amount of money stored on a chip card and manipulations are an issue here.
However, the chip is not the only place where that information is stored.
In normal circumstances, the amount of money stored on the chip and within the bank/company are always the same as transactions are done simulteneously on both sides.
If fraud is committed, there will be an inconsistency and it is trivial for a bank to detect and take appropriate actions.
With security, it is not always about 100% preventing bad things from happening, but also detecting and recovering from attacks is important.
Attacks on smartcards do take place. If your bank decides to issue new cards well before the expiration date, you know there is a known issue with the current cards.
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