Zombie Card: An expired Visa credit card can be used for purchases


Did you know there is still a good reason to physically destroy your expired credit card? Scientific research found that the expiration date used by payment terminals on some contactless cards was not effectively protected against tampering.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers Raja Hasnain Anwar, Gerard DeCunha, and Muhammad Taqi Raza tested contactless cards across Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express, using multiple terminals and merchants, and cards from five major US banks.

They found that a payment terminal could be tricked into seeing a future expiry date. Basically, they were able to modify the expiration date sent to the terminal to a future date. This allowed them to revive expired Visa contactless credit cards for real in-store purchases. Hence the name “Zombie Card.”

Read more…
Source:  MalwareBytes Labs


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • CMS Sitecore patches critical zero-day flaw

    September 5, 2025

    Popular CMS platform Sitecore has patched a critical zero-day vulnerability found to be being abused in cyberattacks. Security researchers from Mandiant observed threat actors exploiting a zero-day flaw to deploy malware, as well as other legitimate software. The flaw stemmed from the use of sample ASP.NET machine keys published in old deployment guides (pre-2017), and is ...

  • Range Rover and Jaguar drivers face lengthy repair delays after cyber attack crippled garages

    September 4, 2025

    More than a million Range Rover and Jaguar drivers could face huge delays in getting their motors repaired after a devastating cyber-attack crippled Jaguar Land Rover. Bosses at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) were forced to scramble on Sunday, hastily shutting down global computer systems to protect sensitive information. Efforts are still ongoing to reboot the company’s ...

  • Palo Alto Networks becomes the latest to confirm it was hit by Salesloft Drift attack

    September 3, 2025

    The Salesloft Drift incident is quickly turning into the next MOVEit MFT fiasco, as yet another company confirms losing sensitive data in the third-party attack. This time around, it is the American multinational cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks that confirmed losing customer data and support cases information in the breach. It all began with the sales ...

  • Google warns Gmail users to change passwords after data breach

    September 3, 2025

    Google is warning about 2.5 billion Gmail users to change their passwords or install a passkey following a data breach that has led to a surge in “phishing” email attacks. The data breach that prompted the warning reportedly happened at a Salesforce database that Google uses internally. The compromised information included basic business contact information such ...

  • Cloudflare blocks another largest recorded DDoS attack – this time, peaking at 11.5 Tbps

    September 3, 2025

    Internet infrastructure provider and global cloud platform, Cloudflare, recently prevented a record-breaking Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack from causing any damage. In a short announcement published on X, Cloudflare said its defenses “have been working overtime” over the past few weeks, autonomously blocking “hundreds of hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks.” Among them was an attack that reached ...

  • Zscaler says it suffered data breach following Salesloft Drift compromise

    September 3, 2025

    We can now add Zscaler to the growing list of Salesloft customers who suffered a third-party cyberattack and lost sensitive customer information after it confirmed data was taken. In the announcement, Zscaler explained it was a customer of Salesloft, whose AI chat platform, Salesloft Drift, was compromised. Since this platform connects with Salesforce, the miscreants managed ...