Tag Archives: Season

[Security] Tarnovsky Explains Infineon TPM Hack

On the Black Hat 2010 conference in Crystal City notorious smart card hacker Christopher Tarnovsky explained how he managed to hack current Trusted Platform Modules by Infineon.

This time Tarnovsky managed to read secured data from TPM chips like RSA and DES crypto keys. His approach took six months and a lab consisting of devices for about US$ 200,000. After having found out the exacty way to compromise Infineon’s chips it took only six hours to compromise an XBox 360’s TPM chip.

On the Black Hat 2008 in Amsterdam Tarnovsky said he was offered US$ 100,000 to crack the Xbox 360’s TPM:

A Microsoft engineer is wondering: “Did you take an interest in the processor of our Xbox360 game console?” – “I was offered 100’000 dollars to break it”, says Tarnovsky. “But I replied that that wasn’t enough.”

For people generally interested in approaching smart card security check this article with a video Wired.com featuring Tarnovsky in his security lab.

[Security] Credit Card Authorization Compromised

Security experts from the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge have compromised the electronic autorization and verification process of major credit and debit cards like EC-Card, Eurocard, Mastercard and VISA (EMV).

The computer scientists team around Steven Murdoch found a flaw in the in the EMV protocol which allows criminals to use a stolen genuine card to make a payment without knowing the card’s PIN.

Using a man-in-the-middle attack they trick the electronic terminal into believing the PIN was verified correctly while telling the terminal to step back into signature based authorization mode.

This being said, credit card companies and banks worldwide will not be able to hide behind the phrase that their systems are secure and that customers who have been stolen credit cards have not observed the rule to destroy their credit card’s PIN. Insurance companies take care: customers recurse receivables against issueing banks are coming.

Links:
» IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy: Chip and PIN is Broken (PDF)
» BBC.co.uk: New flaws in chip and PIN system revealed
» University of Cambridge: Computer Laboratory

Documentary is courtesy of BBC.co.uk