CAPEC-397 Metadata
Likelihood of Attack
High
Typical Severity
Medium
Overview
Summary
An attacker duplicates the data on a Magnetic strip card (i.e. 'swipe card' or 'magstripe') to gain unauthorized access to a physical location or a person's private information. Magstripe cards encode data on a band of iron-based magnetic particles arrayed in a stripe along a rectangular card. Most magstripe card data formats conform to ISO standards 7810, 7811, 7813, 8583, and 4909. The primary advantage of magstripe technology is ease of encoding and portability, but this also renders magnetic strip cards susceptible to unauthorized duplication. If magstripe cards are used for access control, all an attacker need do is obtain a valid card long enough to make a copy of the card and then return the card to its location (i.e. a co-worker's desk). Magstripe reader/writers are widely available as well as software for analyzing data encoded on the cards. By swiping a valid card, it becomes trivial to make any number of duplicates that function as the original.
Prerequisites
No prerequisites listed.
Potential Solutions / Mitigations
No specific solutions listed.
Related CAPECs
| CAPEC ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CAPEC-395 | An attacker exploits security assumptions to bypass electronic locks or other forms of access controls. Most attacks against electronic access controls follow similar methods but utilize different tools. Some electronic locks utilize magnetic strip cards, others employ RFID tags embedded within a card or badge, or may involve more sophisticated protections such as voice-print, thumb-print, or retinal biometrics. Magnetic Strip and RFID technologies are the most widespread because they are cost effective to deploy and more easily integrated with other electronic security measures. These technologies share common weaknesses that an attacker can exploit to gain access to a facility protected by the mechanisms via copying legitimate cards or badges, or generating new cards using reverse-engineered algorithms. |
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