The PIN in the head is, of course, good. But 4 digits is not enough if the account has a multi-digit balance. Today I will talk about devices such as crypto calculators, they greatly increase the security of using chip cards outside the terminals. But, unfortunately, they are not very common.
We remember that a chip card is a full-fledged computer, albeit a small one. From his operating system, with different applications installed on the card, etc. The technological potential of such a device is generally very large. And one of the applications of this potential is additional protection of operations carried out with a plastic card outside the terminal. Another special application is installed on the card, which can calculate some values by applying PIN and own keys to them. Sometimes this is the same application that is used for payments.
MasterCard has developed specification, in which he described a special portable device that can interact with the card. We insert our card into this device, and then choose one of the interaction options. We type something on this device, we see something on its display as a result. This device is called a crypto calculator.
One of the modes of operation is when the application generates a dynamic password (using some kind of secret key), we see the result on the display of the crypto calculator, and enter this value where it is required.
In another, more common use case, the system gives us a random number (challenge), we enter it into the crypto calculator, based on this number and the secret key of the card, the response value is calculated, we enter it into the program that requires it (for example, Internet banking , or a payment processing site).
Here is an example of a telebank window where authorization can be performed using a crypto calculator. By the way, this window is very similar to the Internet banking window that the company I work for is developing. And I myself once put my hand to this product, which is why I recognized the window
In the photo, by the way, there is an interesting crypto calculator. Somewhere in the nightstand is lying like this. Firstly, it is the size of a plastic card (but still thicker). Secondly, it has an optical reader. There are several photodiodes on the top edge of the crypto calculator. This is to avoid manually entering the "challenge" value. Blinking squares are displayed on the screen, a person leans the edge of the cryptocalculator against the screen (against these squares), and the cryptocalculator reads the required number by blinking the squares. It looks funny, but I can't say that it is somehow especially convenient. So, a toy.
In theory, you can have several different cards, and you can work with each using a crypto calculator, if your bank is able to process the relevant information. But, as you can see in the title of the article, there are also cards in which the crypto calculator is already built-in. More precisely, a map with crypto calculator functions. I don’t know how widespread it is ... It is clear that the price of the card rises due to such tricks.
In any case, no matter how anyone thinks about it, the days of plastic cards have long been numbered. They are being replaced by slender rows of applications on phones in a variety of guises. But, I think, the cards will not die out completely for a long time. So if you have a multi-digit amount on your card, maybe you should buy a crypto calculator for additional protection of your transactions.
