[Cryptography] French credit card has time-varying PIN

Jerry Leichter leichter at lrw.com
Mon Oct 3 16:48:22 EDT 2016


> But what if the numbers on your card changed every hour so that, even if a fraudster copied them, they'd quickly be out of date?
> 
> That's exactly what two French banks are starting to do with their new high-tech ebank cards.
Hmm.  RSA developed this kind of thing at least 8 years ago.  They had trouble making the cards reliable enough in real-world use - e.g., being flexed in a wallet in someone's back pocket - and they also couldn't gen up enough interest, so the project died.

What surprise me, though:  In an era of chip-and-pin - which is pretty much universal in Europe by now, except for US tourists - why would you want this?  What's the number printed on the card being used for?  I suppose you could use it for Internet shopping and similar card-not-present transactions - is that what this is really aimed at?
                                                        -- Jerry



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