#9
The Hacker News
general
August 20, 2026 at 12:01 UTC
Zombie Card Attack Can Revive Expired Visa Cards for Contactless Payments
By [email protected] (The Hacker News)
AI Summary
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst demonstrated the 'Zombie Card' attack, which revives expired Visa contactless credit cards for real in-store POS purchases by rewriting the expiration date read over NFC — without breaking any of the card's underlying cryptography. The attack requires physical access to the card and exploits a weak validation check at the NFC/POS interface layer. The finding exposes a fundamental gap in contactless payment terminal validation that Visa and payment terminal vendors will need to address.
Relevance score: 79.0/100
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