CHIP & PIN Cracked?

James

A pair of scammers who used cloned credit cards to steal more than £150,000 worth of rail passes to sell on the black market have been jailed.

The scam cost rail operator Southern Trains £156,000 and forced the company to change its customer policy by limiting purchases to those without chip and pin cards.

Story here

Questions:

Has the Chip part of Chip & PIN be cracked?

How did the scammers acquire the PINs?

I wonder why they didn't use the cloned cards and PINs at ATM's. Maybe they did.

Has any reader been a victim of the Southern Trains scam?

And a big well done to the police

Oakey22

James wrote: »

A pair of scammers who used cloned credit cards to steal more than £150,000 worth of rail passes to sell on the black market have been jailed.

The scam cost rail operator Southern Trains £156,000 and forced the company to change its customer policy by limiting purchases to those without chip and pin cards.

Story here

Questions:

Has the Chip part of Chip & PIN be cracked? They did not use Chip and Pin

How did the scammers acquire the PINs? They did not, it must have been signed for

I wonder why they didn't use the cloned cards and PINs at ATM's. Maybe they did. How when they did not use Pins?

Has any reader been a victim of the Southern Trains scam? I did not

And a big well done to the police

No where in the aticle did it say they used chip and pin. It actually said people without chip and pin were limited, with this information one can only presume that they did not have chip and pin information.

elite_2

The article isn't very clear stating:

The scam cost rail operator Southern Trains £156,000 and forced the company to change its customer policy by limiting purchases to those without chip and pin cards.

And then:

"This caused the travel company very real problems, and eventually they tried to solve it by inconveniencing the public, limiting those who did not have chip and pin to withdrawing a maximum of £20 per day," Judge Price said.

oldagetraveller

Oakey22 wrote: »

It actually said people without chip and pin were limited, with this information one can only presume that they did not have chip and pin information.

"limiting those who did not have chip and pin to withdrawing a maximum of £20 per day," Judge Price said."

I'm sure your posts are well intended and appreciated James - but please change the record!

Badger_Lady

Ah! I misunderstood the sentence "limiting purchases to those without chip and pin cards"

I thought it meant they were limiting purchases so that you could only buy if you had a non-ChipandPin card! Which didn't make much sense...

It actually means: if you haven't got a ChipandPin card, you are limited in what you can buy.

Whew - and relax.

James

Badger_Lady wrote: »

Ah! I misunderstood the sentence "limiting purchases to those without chip and pin cards"

I thought it meant they were limiting purchases so that you could only buy if you had a non-ChipandPin card! Which didn't make much sense...

It actually means: if you haven't got a ChipandPin card, you are limited in what you can buy.

Whew - and relax.

Please don't shoot the messenger.

It is very unclear - I was only posting a few questions, in light of the huge amounts lost to the garage scams.

I think this paragraph is ambiguous.

The question still remains. How did they manage to use Cloned cards to puchase tickets?

Badger_Lady

James wrote:

Please don't shoot the messenger.

Won't shoot you James

KTF

James wrote: »

How did they manage to use Cloned cards to puchase tickets?

They signed for them instead of using chip and pin?

knowledgeman

The situation officially with UK banks at the moment is that the CHIP in cards CANNOT be cloned

Any sort of cloning has to fallback to the magnetic strip, to reduce levels of fraud using cloned cards UK banks have took the policy of severly limiting the use of magnetic strips were a chip should be used

This has put an extreme limit on UK counterfeit fraud and is the reason fraudsters need to go abroad and use foreign cash machines, were chip and pin isnt recognised as being available

Within the UK a few places still use magnetic strip such as some automated fuel machines, ticket machines etc

So all that has happened is they have cloned the magnetic strips off cards and used them somewere that only magnetic strips are used

Without the full facts I cant say 100% but I dont think these people have used the chip or pins at all

They have just reverted back 3 years to a traditional mag stripe clone and found somewere it would work

Due to the liability shift the losers here will be the merchant

vikingaero

Although most banks don't advertise it freely, there are plenty of people who still need/use signature cards because of visual impairment or other disability which means that they can't use chip n' pin.

James

vikingaero wrote: »

Although most banks don't advertise it freely, there are plenty of people who still need/use signature cards because of visual impairment or other disability which means that they can't use chip n' pin.

Every card I have which bears the Visa or MasterCard log is Chip & Signature.

Chip and Signature cards work thus, The Chip is checked to confirm the card is genuine and then a transaction slip (rather than entering a PIN) is produced for the person presenting the card to sign.

By the way, anyone can obtain Chip & Signature Cards, it's just a matter of talking to the right person at your card supplier.

Back to the topic. I can't believe that UK issued (cloned)cards were presented for face-to-face transaction without a Chip. If they were Chpped, they should have been declined, or at the very least the card issuer contacted for a security check. This level of fallback to magstrip without a card check, suggests lax procedures (costing 150K), or collusion.