Thursday, July 05, 2012

"NFC Payment Test at Olympics Will Inspire Mobile Attackers to Go for the Gold"

Visa is testing out its PayWave contactless payment service at the Summer Olympics in London. Every athlete will get a Samsung Galaxy SIII phone enabled with near-field communication (NFC) along with Visa’s payment app. Contactless payments aren’t new, and similar payments by mobile phone have been tested by Google with its Wallet app and other NFC smartphones. 
Image of Samsung Galaxy SIII
A Samsung Galaxy SIII will be given to every athlete competing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. 
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The Samsung Galaxy SIII goes on sale in North America and worldwide within the first two weeks of July. An attacker wishing to target the device can purchase one easily and use Mulliner’s research to help find vulnerabilities and eventually develop exploits to steal a victim’s credit card. The large number of readers at the Olympics will provide places where a successful attacker can use stolen credentials to make purchases. The Olympics will also provide a concentrated pool of targets (people and phones) to pilfer from–especially if everyone is busy watching who wins the medals and not worrying about where his or her phone is.

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