Hacked bank cards: the new precautions to take

The most vulnerable cards seem to be Visa (2.4 million) followed by MasterCard (1.6 million) and American Express. The hackers used several methods each time to obtain the card numbers. Here are their detailed techniques.

In six seconds, a hacker can guess your card number remotely and put it up for sale on the dark web. This is confirmed by a study by researchers at the University of Newcastle, confirmed by NordVPN, an online security company. A simple laptop is enough.

The study was conducted on some 4 million bank cards cracked and then sold for 10 dollars on the dark web (pirates’ internet network, editor’s note). Because the scammer does not need to find all the numbers of your credit card, some being easily predictable.

The first six digits of the card indicate the bank and card type. They are therefore the same for all customers of the same establishment. The 16th is only a check to certify that errors have not been made when entering the numbers. There are then only 9 digits left to guess. What a computer can easily do.

Regarding the expiration date, banks usually issue cards that are valid for 60 months, so it takes a maximum of 60 attempts to find the correct date. We decipher below the most common methods used by hackers to steal the identity of your bank card.