好文分享 – 關於磁條金融卡

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磁條金融卡在台灣目前已經見不到了，

原因很簡單就是容易被盜刷，

美國一直到很晚才採用晶片金融卡，

今天就來告訴大家關於磁條金融卡的小故事

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       A thin magnetic stripe is all that stands between Americans’ credit-card information and the bad guys.  And they’ve been working hard to break in. Banks, law enforcement and technology companies are all trying to thwart a network of hackers who are swiping account numbers, names and other crucial data used in identity theft. More than 100 million accounts at Target, Neiman Marcus and Michaels stores were all affected in recent attacks, starting November 2013.

美國人的信用卡資料跟壞人間只有一個磁條。壞人們一直在努力闖入。銀行、執法機構和科技公司都在努力阻止這些網路駭客，盜用身分的駭客們盜取帳號，名稱和其他重要數據。從2013年11月開始，Target，Neiman Marcus和Michaels商店超過一億多個帳戶都在最近的攻擊中受到了影響。

       Cards are increasingly vulnerable to attacks in store transactions. Hackers scoop up massive troves of credit-, debit- or prepaid-card numbers using malware inserted surreptitiously into the retailers’ checkout systems. Hackers then sold the data to a second group of criminals operating in shadowy corners of the web.  Not long after, the stolen data was showing up on counterfeit cards and being used for online purchases.     

這些卡片越來越容易在商店交易中被攻擊。駭客利用零售商結帳系統中的惡意軟體，蒐集了大量的信用卡，借記卡或預付卡號。然後，駭客將資料賣給了網路犯罪的不法分子。不久後，盜取的數據用在偽卡上進行線上購物。

       The solution could cost as little as $2 extra for every piece of plastic issued. The fix is a security technology used heavily outside the U.S. While American credit cards use the 40-year-old magstripe technology to process transactions, much of the rest of the world uses smarter cards with the EMV (short for Europay, MasterCard, Visa), a technology that employs a chip embedded in the card plus a customer PIN to authenticate every transaction on the spot. If a purchaser fails to punch in the correct PIN at the checkout, the transaction gets rejected.       

解決方案僅需每張發行卡片花費額外 2美元。該修補程序是一種在美國以外廣泛使用的安全技術，而美國信用卡使用磁條技術來處理交易已有40年歷史，而世界上大多數其他國家使用EMV（Europay，MasterCard，Visa的縮寫）的智慧卡，這項技術採用了卡中嵌入的晶片以及客戶PIN來當場驗證每筆交易。如果購買者未能在結帳時輸入正確的PIN，交易將被拒絕。

        The cost of a magstripe card is in the dollar range. A chip-and-PIN card currently costs close to $3. Multiple $3 by 5 billion cards in circulation in the U.S. Then consider that there’s an estimated $12.4 billion in card fraud on a global basis. With 44% of that in the U.S., American credit-card fraud amounts to $5.5 billion annually. Card issuers find that absorbing the liability for even big hacks like the Target one is still cheaper than replacing all that plastic.       

一張磁條卡的成本不到一美元。晶片和PIN卡目前的成本接近3美元。3美元乘上在美國發行的50億張卡。想想看，全球範圍內估計有124億美元的卡片欺詐案，美國佔其中的44％，每年達55億美元。發卡機構發現，即便像這樣的大型犯罪，承擔責任也比更換所有卡片便宜。

        That leaves American retailers pretty much alone the world over in relying on magstripe technology, and leaves consumers vulnerable. Ironically enough, the historical reason the U.S. has stuck with magstripe is the once superior technology. The nation’s cheap, ultra-reliable wired networks made credit-card authentication over the phone frictionless. In France, card companies created EMV partly because the telephone monopoly was so maddeningly inefficient and expensive. The workaround allowed transactions to be verified locally and securely.

這使得美國零售商在很大程度上依賴於磁條技術，並使消費者易受傷害。具有諷刺意味的是，美國堅持使用磁條的歷史原因是曾經的卓越技術。美國便宜，可靠的有線網路使電話上的信用卡認證變得毫不費力。在法國，發卡公司創建EMV的部分原因是，電話專賣事業相當的低效且昂貴。此解決方法讓交易在本地驗證且更安全。

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看完關於磁條金融卡的故事，

若你掌管發卡機構，

是否願意花費更多錢來更換卡片？

最後，

同樣列出自己的單字片語：

magnetic stripe    磁條 (n)

break in               侵入(v)

law enforcement 執法單位(n)

thwart                  阻擾(v)

swiping               刷卡(n)

crucial                 重要(adj)

vulnerable           脆弱的(adj)

malware              惡意軟體(n)

surreptitiously     暗中(adv)

retailers               零售商(n)

counterfeit           偽造(adj)

absorbing            吸收(v)

liability               責任(n)

inefficient           低效(adj)