DIY Universal Credit Card Spoofer

Earlier, back in the  90s when I first dated the Internet, I found credit cards were easy to exploit. It was as easy as getting a software that auto-generates numbers that could be used to make purchase online. Thank god, those things no longer work, other wise it would have been chaos.

Well what you are about to read could be HARMFUL to us, again.

WARNING: Do not proceed if you intend to exploit this. The sole purpose of the original author of the hack is for educational purposes only.

Magnetic spoofers have been around for a while. The one you see in movies,  a kid hacks CCs with a piece of hardware, is very much possible.

We’re getting close to that kind of magic with card spoofer that is button-programmable.

Jarek, the author of the Hack, accomplished this by interfacing a 16-button keyboard and a LCD with an AVR ATmega168 microcontroller. Card codes can be entered with the buttons and verified on the LCD. Of course this is still dependent on you knowing the code in the first place.

As you know, credit cards use this technology. It’s literally not possible to use this over shops, stores coz this thing doesn’t looks like credit card at all. But there is another potential area where it raises concern :The same technoloy is also used for building access in Offices, Universities, and hotels.

The basic concept is pretty simple. It has a electromagnet which is adjusted by the voltage controlled the microcontroller. It sends out just right voltage to get the right magnetic pattern on the end of the plate, pretending it to be a card.

You can read the complete guide here.

The scope is pretty much unlimited, and the purpose of this post is to raise awareness among the authorities to move away from this technology.