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Apple Pay is literally the safest way to use a credit card today. Credit (and debit) cards in Canada and elsewhere have had NFC functionality for several years

by personZ 12y ago

Apple Pay is literally the safest way to use a credit card today. Credit (and debit) cards in Canada and elsewhere have had NFC functionality for several years now. You never hand your card or numbers to anyone, but instead through chip insertion or proximal NFC it communicates with the identifier on the card, which the payment processor can correlate with you, and using the secret on the card cryptographically signs a transaction. The most secure way I can use my credit card...is to use my credit card: Nothing that can be usurped is passed to the POS terminal. Apple is essentially injecting themselves in a simple process that works extremely well.

natrius 12y ago
EDIT: I think this might be wrong, FYI. Sure, you never hand the card over when you pay with NFC, but that card number is being sent through computer systems that current events prove are very vulnerable. NFC and Chip-and-PIN protect the merchant from fraud, not the user. A malicious customer can't use a stolen card at a merchant that only accepts Chip-and-PIN payments. EMVCo tokenization generates a token that can only be used with one-time cryptograms generated with a secret key that never leaves the device. If someone hacks a merchant you pay via Apple Pay and tries to use your token as a card number online, it will be rejected even though it looks like a card number. EMVCo tokenization is a new thing. It is better than what came before it because it was designed with that goal in mind. People are reluctant to believe this for some reason.
- personZ 12y ago
  EMVCo tokenization generates a token that can only be used with one-time cryptograms generated with a secret key that never leaves the device You mean exactly like the EMV that is on every Canadian credit card since about 2007? NFC / Chip hold unique tokens that have on device cryptography, exactly as you've described. You can't "steal" anything of consequence via NFC or the chip, and that's why it was designed. Further while you say that it's for the vendor, the liable party for fraud is actually the credit card companies, which is exactly why they made EMV. You seem to think this is all new because of EMVCo, however it is a standardization for the last mile: Google Wallet originally was doing what the credit cards themselves do, holding the secret key and identifiers on an NXP secure element. There are issues with that (largely carrier related) which is why the industry started moving to software-held tokens, as in the Apple solution. Presenting an iPhone token offers zero additional security over presenting a Canadian chip or NFC credit card, and that notion is rather ridiculous.
  - natrius 12y ago
    Hm. There's a chance that your contactless card sends a different token that isn't your credit card number when you pay that way. I'm not sure. If so, you're right that it's basically the same level of security. However, the new way lets you do the same thing in software without giving all your transactions to Google, which is nice. We'll be able to do online payments that are as secure and private as NFC, which we can't today.
  - lstamour 12y ago
    Sadly, you can read magstripe data via NFC with today's contactless cards. I've seen apps do it on the Google Play store today. See section 5.1 on page 7 here: http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f.r43.cf2.rackcdn.com/12055-woot13-roland.pdf http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f... Note though, replay attacks require downgrading the card and suggesting it's not actually EMV-secured. And um, it appears all you need is a cell phone to clone one card onto another, if I'm really reading this right? No wonder we need EMV or stronger, Apple Pay protections. Frankly, the way I see it, we can't move fast enough to one-time use card numbers, however we achieve it... then I suppose more fraud will attack the next weakest point, perhaps passwords or IT systems.

by personZ 12y ago

natrius 12y ago

EDIT: I think this might be wrong, FYI. Sure, you never hand the card over when you pay with NFC, but that card number is being sent through computer systems that current events prove are very vulnerable. NFC and Chip-and-PIN protect the merchant from fraud, not the user. A malicious customer can't use a stolen card at a merchant that only accepts Chip-and-PIN payments. EMVCo tokenization generates a token that can only be used with one-time cryptograms generated with a secret key that never leaves the device. If someone hacks a merchant you pay via Apple Pay and tries to use your token as a card number online, it will be rejected even though it looks like a card number. EMVCo tokenization is a new thing. It is better than what came before it because it was designed with that goal in mind. People are reluctant to believe this for some reason.

personZ 12y ago
EMVCo tokenization generates a token that can only be used with one-time cryptograms generated with a secret key that never leaves the device You mean exactly like the EMV that is on every Canadian credit card since about 2007? NFC / Chip hold unique tokens that have on device cryptography, exactly as you've described. You can't "steal" anything of consequence via NFC or the chip, and that's why it was designed. Further while you say that it's for the vendor, the liable party for fraud is actually the credit card companies, which is exactly why they made EMV. You seem to think this is all new because of EMVCo, however it is a standardization for the last mile: Google Wallet originally was doing what the credit cards themselves do, holding the secret key and identifiers on an NXP secure element. There are issues with that (largely carrier related) which is why the industry started moving to software-held tokens, as in the Apple solution. Presenting an iPhone token offers zero additional security over presenting a Canadian chip or NFC credit card, and that notion is rather ridiculous.
- natrius 12y ago
  Hm. There's a chance that your contactless card sends a different token that isn't your credit card number when you pay that way. I'm not sure. If so, you're right that it's basically the same level of security. However, the new way lets you do the same thing in software without giving all your transactions to Google, which is nice. We'll be able to do online payments that are as secure and private as NFC, which we can't today.
- lstamour 12y ago
  Sadly, you can read magstripe data via NFC with today's contactless cards. I've seen apps do it on the Google Play store today. See section 5.1 on page 7 here: http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f.r43.cf2.rackcdn.com/12055-woot13-roland.pdf http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f... Note though, replay attacks require downgrading the card and suggesting it's not actually EMV-secured. And um, it appears all you need is a cell phone to clone one card onto another, if I'm really reading this right? No wonder we need EMV or stronger, Apple Pay protections. Frankly, the way I see it, we can't move fast enough to one-time use card numbers, however we achieve it... then I suppose more fraud will attack the next weakest point, perhaps passwords or IT systems.