Credit Card Shaving

[rbcp]

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/120676296493670.xml&coll=7&thispage=1

The thief didn't need Reed's bank or debit cards, financial records, mail or credit card receipts. She hit on his account number by chance.

Like mathematicians searching for the right formula, such thieves painstakingly try out combinations of 16 digits until they come up with a series that fits someone's card number.

They grab gift cards found in most grocery stores and craft their own credit card or debit card -- shaving numbers off the gift cards with razor blades and gluing the right sequence onto a stolen bank card or a bank-issued gift card.

Police say the scam, called credit card shaving, is taking off in the Portland area. Victims usually are unaware that their accounts have been compromised.

Isn't that weird?  This story is really long and has some interesting stuff in it.  I can't believe that cashiers would fall for something like this.  This is the first I've ever heard of someone shaving the numbers off of credit cards.

Also, isn't there an easier way to do this?  Isn't there a machine that will print numbers into plastic just like a credit card?

[Jesus]

You could probably heat up the card to make it more pliable, then press the numbers in with a small screwdriver or something.

[Tachyon]

I bet you could use one of those punches that print onto the red plastic tape (Dynamex?) to work for this, if you had loads of blank cards. The method described sounds way too tedious to be done by anyone not on crystal meth.

[N3gativ3sanity]

I'm not sure one of those punches would actually be strong enough to punch into a blank card. They're made for pretty flimsy plastic. You could probably rig something up based on that though.

[Tachyon]

I'm not sure one of those punches would actually be strong enough to punch into a blank card. They're made for pretty flimsy plastic. You could probably rig something up based on that though.

Well you could warm the card up first then.

[m0rdekai]

Cant you write data to credit card strip?

[MattGSX]

Yes, but it would probably be overly complicated for anyone not on crystal meth (see above)

EDIT: OOPs. That should have read:
but it would probably be overly complicated for anyone on crystal meth (see above)

[Copyright]

You could use this: http://hackershomepage.com/section6.htm But $500 is expensive if you aren't using someone else's cc.

[PHISH-PHREAK]

Someone I used to work with did this. He swiped credit cards through a small reader that stored the numbers which he then took to some guy who made fake cards from the credit card information in which the person I worked with stole.

Eventually he got caught and the secret service investigated him. He managed to get off easy though because he snitched on the guy who made the cards.

[Tachyon]

You know that's actually a great idea, having somebody you don't like set up to provide jail cover for you in a worst case scenario. I'll have to make a note of this.

[Kitsunexus]

http://www.zug.com/credit/student/

[splynt0r]

Also, isn't there an easier way to do this?  Isn't there a machine that will print numbers into plastic just like a credit card?

I would think Type writer numbers and a blow torch would be easy enough.

[ravenmaddox]

Someone I used to work with did this. He swiped credit cards through a small reader that stored the numbers which he then took to some guy who made fake cards from the credit card information in which the person I worked with stole.

Eventually he got caught and the secret service investigated him. He managed to get off easy though because he snitched on the guy who made the cards.

One of the foreman at work got scammed like this. Best we can figure it happened when he was in Texas for some training some restaurant employee etc, must've scanned his card and sold the scans for someone to create a fake. It was a couple months later looking over the visa bill that we noticed $4000 in the Phoenix / Scotsdale area had been spent at various wal-marts and such buying mostly gift cards and pre-paid cellphone minutes.

I looked into it and discovered that the chance of randomly hitting a valid card is almost nil. The card number itself follows luhn but also the expiration date AND an equivalent of the cvv is encoded in the stripe but it is *NOT* the same as the number printed on the back of the card. The format of the magstripe varies from one card to another but there is a basic format followed that can be used to recreate cards. My final idea was to look at the next extrapolated number in the luhn series, use the same expiry, and then guess at the internal CVV. Its only 3 digits, so if you made 1000 fakes, one would really solve the internal algorithm - which i believe would be enough to authorize say automated gas pumps but may still be invalid or unissued.

I researched this using scans from all our company credit cards plus some of my own, and really had no intention of using them to scam but only to see how hard it would be to generate a random card that would satisfy the math, but when the secret service busted my friend for passing the novelty ids and novelty checks I had printed him... they confiscated my reader/writer and charged me with possession of the cards (which was nothing more than a cmasterIV list with my companies cards highlighted so i could find a gap card to play with)