Analysis of potential vulnerabilities in payment terminals

Abstract

Payment systems fraud is considered in the center of several types of criminal activities. The introduction of robust payment standards, practices and procedures has undoubtedly reduced criminals' profit, and significantly hardened their work. Still though, all payment systems' components are constantly scrutinised to identify vulnerabilities. This chapter focuses on the security of payment terminals, as a critical component in a payment system's infrastructure, providing an understanding on potential attacks identified in the literature. The attacks are not only limited to those aiming to insult terminals' tamper-resistance characteristics but also include those that target weak procedures and practices aiming to facilitate the design of better systems, solutions and deployments.