Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst presented findings at the Usenix Cybersecurity Conference last week showing that expired Visa credit cards can be used to make contactless payments if a fraudster obtains the card and proxies its data through a man-in-the-middle app on a pair of phones. The technique, which the researchers called “zombifying” the card, exploits flaws in Visa’s authentication chain for contactless transactions. Visa delegates the task of verifying whether an expired card should be accepted to the cardholder’s bank, and while some banks block the transaction, others do not. That means a discarded or unattended expired Visa card could be picked up and used to drain the owner’s account, especially at point-of-sale terminals without a human attendant to question the phone-based relay setup. The researchers advise physically destroying expired cards, such as with scissors, to prevent this reanimation.
This warning comes amid a broader wave of security and privacy developments reported this week. Apple sent an unprecedented number of alerts to potential targets of mercenary spyware, which is stealthy malware installed by governments or state-sponsored hackers. According to TechCrunch, the alerts reached users in 110 countries, with a spike more than 30 percent higher than previous rounds, as estimated by Mohammed Al-Maskati, who leads a security investigation team at the digital rights group Access Now. One confirmed target was a Ukrainian soldier, and other Ukrainian military members also received the alert. Security researchers at iVerify and Google have identified two iOS mass-hacking tools this year, known as DarkSword and Coruna, suggesting sophisticated iPhone hacking campaigns may be increasing.
In the ongoing cyberwar between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine has claimed a new tactic modeled on Russian behavior. The Ukrainian military said it carried out a disruptive cyberattack against Russian ecommerce giant Wildberries, which it described as part of Russia’s military logistics and a financier of the war, according to cybersecurity news outlet The Record. The attack coincided with drone strikes that destroyed nearly 13 million square feet of Wildberries warehouse space, as reported by Russian media. The Record could not confirm the exact effects of the cyberattack on the company.
Separately, a coalition of US agencies including the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an advisory warning that hackers are using AI to automate exploitation of Siemens programmable logic controllers, or PLCs, which control physical systems. These devices are used in manufacturing, chemical, energy, water, food, and agriculture facilities. The advisory states that AI-generated exploitation scripts sharply reduce the technical skill and time needed to develop working tools for industrial control systems. This development arrives amid an ongoing campaign of likely Iranian hacker disruptions targeting US water and wastewater utilities across seven states.
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