advertisement
advertisement

Is Carrier IQ A PCI Problem? (Hint: The Answer’s Yes.)

Written by Frank Hayes
December 7th, 2011

Most of the uproar over Carrier IQ and its monitoring software installed on many smartphones has focused on conventional privacy worries—whether an outsider is capturing and storing sensitive private information. But a bigger concern for retailers might be the fact that Carrier IQ can reportedly broadcast payment-card numbers unencrypted over Wi-Fi as the numbers are being entered by online customers or in-store associates.

Never mind whether Carrier IQ or the mobile operator is keeping this information. If it’s merely being transmitted unencrypted, a thief monitoring a store’s wireless networks might be able to scoop it up in transit.

Carrier IQ, mobile carriers and handset makers are currently the targets of at least a dozen class-action privacy lawsuits stemming from the software (take your pick whether to call it “spyware” or “performance monitor”). Carrier IQ denies that it is storing sensitive information—it’s just collecting performance data that the carriers have asked for, the company says.

But privacy aside, it’s clear from a widely circulated video demonstration by security researcher Trevor Eckhart that Carrier IQ’s software has access to almost everything that happens on a phone it’s monitoring. The software maker insists most of those events—right down to key presses—are filtered out before data is sent on to the carriers.

That may be what Carrier IQ intends. Here’s the problem: For diagnostic purposes, Carrier IQ’s software apparently queries information over Wi-Fi connections when there’s no cell-tower connection available. Raw keypress information is sent in real time over the air. Those raw key codes aren’t hard to decipher (they just identify ASCII characters) and they could contain payment-card numbers and confirmation information such as CVV or ZIP codes.

That’s a PCI problem whether or not Carrier IQ throws the information away at the other end. If it’s being transmitted, it could be captured by thieves. And there’s no way for a retailer to know what’s being sent, whether it’s encrypted or if the process meets PCI requirements.

OK, we can probably answer that last one: If a third party with no PCI validation is handling payment-card data, the process almost certainly doesn’t satisfy PCI requirements.

This isn’t what any chain that’s trying to figure out how to do in-store mobile POS wants to hear. Using consumer-grade, mass-market handsets was supposed to make things simpler. Apple and Google were supposed to lock down the iPhone and Android platforms, so all retailers had to do was write the top-level application for associates to use.

Instead, it turns out that there has been software running in the background all along. Worse still, some of the software is being run by a third party (Carrier IQ), authorized by another third party (the mobile carrier) and completely outside the retailer’s control or even knowledge. Yeah, that makes you feel good about in-store mobile POS, doesn’t it?

For all the complaints we’ve had, the PCI Council’s go-slow approach on mobile POS may have been right.


advertisement

Comments are closed.

Newsletters

StorefrontBacktalk delivers the latest retail technology news & analysis. Join more than 60,000 retail IT leaders who subscribe to our free weekly email. Sign up today!
advertisement

Most Recent Comments

Why Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?

I am still unclear about the core point here-- why higher value of European cards. Supply and demand, yes, makes sense. But the fact that the cards were chip and pin (EMV) should make them less valuable because that demonstrably reduces the ability to use them fraudulently. Did the author mean that the chip and pin cards could be used in a country where EMV is not implemented--the US--and this mis-match make it easier to us them since the issuing banks may not have as robust anti-fraud controls as non-EMV banks because they assumed EMV would do the fraud prevention for them Read more...
Two possible reasons that I can think of and have seen in the past - 1) Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code. 2) Also, in offline chip countries the card determines whether or not a transaction is approved, not the issuer. In my experience, European issuers haven't developed the same checks on authorization requests as US issuers. So, these cards might be more valuable because they are more likely to get approved. Read more...
A smart card slot in terminals doesn't mean there is a reader or that the reader is activated. Then, activated reader or not, the U.S. processors don't have apps certified or ready to load into those terminals to accept and process smart card transactions just yet. Don't get your card(t) before the terminal (horse). Read more...
The marketplace does speak. More fraud capacity translates to higher value for the stolen data. Because nearly 100% of all US transactions are authorized online in real time, we have less fraud regardless of whether the card is Magstripe only or chip and PIn. Hence, $10 prices for US cards vs $25 for the European counterparts. Read more...
@David True. The European cards have both an EMV chip AND a mag stripe. Europeans may generally use the chip for their transactions, but the insecure stripe remains vulnerable to skimming, whether it be from a false front on an ATM or a dishonest waiter with a handheld skimmer. If their stripe is skimmed, the track data can still be cloned and used fraudulently in the United States. If European banks only detect fraud from 9-5 GMT, that might explain why American criminals prefer them over American bank issued cards, who have fraud detection in place 24x7. Read more...

StorefrontBacktalk
Our apologies. Due to legal and security copyright issues, we can't facilitate the printing of Premium Content. If you absolutely need a hard copy, please contact customer service.