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    Security researcher: Flaw in Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay makes fraud easy for thieves

    Positive Technologies professional describes vulnerability linked to apps used to pay for public transit tickets.

    Image: iStockphoto/ipopba
    The steadiness between hands-free funds and the safety requirements required to guard these transactions has tipped too far within the unsuitable route, based on a safety professional. 

    At a session at Black Hat Europe 2021 this week, Timur Yunusov,  a senior safety professional at Positive Technologies, defined flaws in contactless fee apps that would result in fraud utilizing misplaced or stolen cellphones. Yunusov focuses on fee and software safety.The key to this fraud is the comfort of paying for subway and bus tickets with out unlocking the cellphone, based on Yunusov. Users within the U.S ., the U.Okay., China and Japan can add a fee card to a smartphone and activate it as a transport card. “To perform the attack, smartphones with Samsung Pay and Apple Pay must be registered in these countries, but the cards can be issued in any other region,” Yunusov mentioned. “The stolen phones can also be used anywhere, and the same is possible with Google Pay.”

    Yunusov and different Positive Technologies researchers examined a collection of funds to see how a lot cash may very well be spent on a single transaction through this methodology. They stopped at 101 kilos. According to the researchers, “even the latest iPhone models allowed us to make payments at any PoS terminal, even if a phone’s battery was dead,” supplied the cellphone used a Visa card for fee and had enabled Express Transit mode.SEE: Digital driver’s licenses: Are they safe sufficient for us to belief?Positive Technologies adheres to the rules of accountable disclosure, which signifies that the software program producers are contacted with details about the safety threat earlier than the flaw is made public. If a producer doesn’t reply in writing inside 90 days, safety researchers reserve the appropriate to publish findings with out mentioning info that may enable malefactors to take advantage of a found vulnerability.Positive Technologies said that Apple, Google and Samsung had been notified in regards to the detected vulnerabilities in March, January and April 2021, respectively. According to Positive Technologies, the businesses mentioned they weren’t planning to make any modifications to their techniques however requested permission to share the findings and studies with the fee techniques. The safety firm additionally mentioned  its researchers contacted Visa and Mastercard technical specialists however didn’t obtain a response. Visa playing cards would be the most weakYunusov mentioned an absence of offline knowledge authentication permits this exploit, regardless that there are EMVCo specs protecting these transactions. “The only problem is that now big companies like MasterCard, Visa and AMEX don’t need to follow these standards when we talk about NFC payments – these companies diverged in the early 2010s, and everyone is now doing what they want here,” he mentioned.Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay apps are all weak to this risk. There does appear to be a distinction if an individual is utilizing a Visa card for fee as a substitute of a Mastercard or American Express, based on Yunusov. “MasterCard decided that ODA is an important part of their security mechanisms and will stick to it,” he mentioned. “Therefore, all terminals across the globe that accept MC cards should carry out the ODA, and if it fails, the NFC transaction should be declined.”Visa doesn’t use this ODA verification in any respect level of sale terminals, based on Yunusov, which creates the vulnerability. Researchers on the University of Birmingham additionally described this flaw in a paper, “Practical EMV Relay Protection.”A Visa spokesperson mentioned in response to the analysis that Visa playing cards linked to cellular wallets with transit options are safe and that almost all contactless fraud schemes have been studied in laboratory settings for greater than a decade and have confirmed to be impractical to execute at scale in the actual world. “Multiple layers of security are used to protect payments and consumers benefit from Visa’s zero liability guarantee,” the spokesperson mentioned. “Visa takes all security threats seriously and continuously evolves its payment security capabilities to protect cardholders from the latest real-world threats.”    Fixing the flaw in cellular pay appsYunusov mentioned that cellphone producers and fee firms have to work collectively to handle this vulnerability. In actuality, Apple and Samsung have shifted the legal responsibility to Visa and MasterCard, he mentioned, regardless that the issue will not be with merchandise from the fee firms.  “The mobile wallets are in a sweet spot – on one side, they (payment companies) earn money from transactions and popularize their products,” Yunusov mentioned. “From another side, they tell customers if there’s any fraud, to contact the issuing bank to ask why they allowed the payment.” Yunusov mentioned the answer to the issue is to think about value, service provider code and cellphone standing for each transaction. He described the method this fashion: “If the payment is for $0.00, the phone is locked, and the MCC code is transport, this is a legitimate transaction when someone pays in the subway. But if the payment is $100, the phone was unlocked (you could retrieve this information in the transaction data), and the MCC is ‘supermarkets,’ which is suspicious, because it should not be possible for customers to pay in supermarkets without unlocking the phone.” He really useful that builders handle these points to enhance the safety of cellular pay apps:Problems with Apple Pay authentication and subject validationConfusion in AAC/ARQC cryptogramsLack of quantity subject validation for public transport schemesLack of MCC subject integrity checks Google Pay funds above No CVM limits**Article up to date on Nov. 15, 2021 with a remark from Visa.

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