A $700 small device is sold on the black market that allows criminals to clone contactless payment cards and then pay with them. The device makes it possible to copy 15 contactless payment cards within a second. Victims have to be in a range of 8 cm.
The developers of the device, named Contactless Infusion X500, claim it's the first skimming device for contactless payment cards. In the United Kingdom both online newspapers the Daily Mail and Daily Star report it is sold for £500 ($700 / €630) which includes software and empty cards.
When the Contactless Infusion X500 is within a 8 cm range of a legitimate contactless payment card it is able to receive the name of the card holder, address data and the card number. This data is then cloned to an empty card. With that card criminals can then pay in any store that supports contactless payments.
Contactless payments are increasingly popular. Apple has Apple Pay, Google has Google Pay and yesterday we reported that Microsoft is planning a new service called Tap to Pay. These different from contactless cards as they use the mobile phone's NFC chip to make payments. Cards can contain either a NFC or RFID chip.
To make a payment usually a PIN is only required above a certain threshold. This allow criminals to make payments with the cloned cards without knowing the victim's PIN code.
