How do Chip Cards Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
999 words · ~4 min read
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it wasn't too long ago that we were mostly paying for things by swiping our
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credit cards as furiously as you'd swipe toilet paper after eating that spicy
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burrito special yeah but the venerable
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magnetic stripe is being phased out in favor of EMV chips which have become
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quite common in most of the world over the past few years but are just now
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catching on with our friends in the United States but why are we ditching
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the magstripe in the first place unsurprisingly one reason is security
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mag Stripes Store data like card numbers and expiration dates in an unsecure
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manner meaning bad guys can steal the information quite easily in a variety of
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ways for example if you're somewhere like an ATM or gas station that only
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accepts mag stripe cards visually
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inspect the card reading equipment and give it a little jiggle to see if it's
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loose if something seems not quite right
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it's possible that someone has installed an inexpensive car skimmer which reads
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your card as you insert it into the slot and transmits the information to a
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nearby criminal who can then use your card number to at best waste your money
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and at worst make super suspicious purchases that could land you on some
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kind of fbii watch list and more skilled
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hackers can even sneak malware onto retail systems that's a lot more
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difficult to detect this is what happened in the US recently when tens of
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millions of customers had their data stolen when cyber criminals planted
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malware in the payment systems of the retail giant Target so how then do chip
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cards prevent these types of breaches well they use a form of public key
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cryptography you can learn more about that in general in this video but here's
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what happens specifically each time you insert your chip card into a reader the
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card generates a random code that's good for that transaction only depending on
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how exactly the encryption is implemented the terminal can use
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encryption keys to decrypt your account information and authorize this
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transaction even if it can't communicate with your credit card company unlike
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magstrip cards which always had to do this to process a transaction since each
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code is onetime use only it's totally useless to an attacker that intercepts
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it and if your card gets stolen it's extremely difficult for someone to clone
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the chip as opposed to magstripe cards which spit out your information as
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readily as a participant in a Watermill eating contest spits out
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seeds that visual aside many systems also now require the use of a pin or
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personal identification number so even if a thief tries to use your original
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card instead of cloning it the transaction won't be authorized unless
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they know your PIN a better solution than the old authentication method that
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only involved signing a receipt of course EMV chip cards are not foolproof
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aside from the constant arms race between financial institutions and black
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hats who try to crack their security there's also the backwards compatibility
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purposes of your card I mean many chip cards still have a MAG stripe which are
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just as vulnerable as ever and the chip doesn't do much to stop fraud in
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situations where someone can just enter a card number such as pretty much all
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online stores that have online shopping that being said it's still better than
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what we used to have but until we have James Bond style biometric scanning at
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every gas station and 7 11 in the freaking world keep your card close and
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think twice before using it at a shady Merchant you don't want to have your
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credit card limit maxed out by some dude who promises you an official lonus
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action figure with hot swappable sandals and a little version of the LT sweater
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after he says all you have to do is put your credit card information into the
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message box like I did I'm still waiting
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Jacob where's my action figure anyways
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like it if you disliked it dislike it leave us a comment down below letting us
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know if you have any video suggestions for future Techquickie episodes also
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check out channel superf fun I have no idea what's happening over there I think
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though I still watch it every Wednesday like clockwork I just want more episodes
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over there hopefully we can figure that out eventually anyways bye I