Cribbed from comp.risks =20
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:33:39 +0100 =46rom: Debora Weber-Wulff Subject: Y2K+10 problem 1. German contactless bank cards (3 messages)
Happy New Year!
Germans now have the answer as to why they came up short at the ATMs = after the New Year. Tagesschau reports online that people who were using newer cash machine cards that had new-fangled golden chips in them were told at the machine that their cards had an error because of a "software error". = Not only ATM machines were affected, supermarkets and such that check cards online refused to accept the cards.
Since I have spent the first 4 days of the year writing "20010", anyone = want to speculate that this is the error? No details on the exact nature of = the error as yet. It is scheduled to be fixed tonight (Jan. 4!).
Not all of the machines refused to work, only the newer ones with the "EMV-Standard"
Older cards, which store information on a magnetic strip, were not = affected.
I'm glad I still have an old card and an ancient machine around the corner. I got money after New Year's.
More: Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:36:57 +0100
It is getting curiouser and curiouser! The Tagesschau reports in
It turns out that even more cards are affected, and even more people are unable to use either their EC cards or their credit cards to obtain cash = or to pay in stores.
The culprit has been named: The company that produces the cards, Gemalto. Seems that the software thinks that it is the year 2016 and not
2010, so all of the cards are no longer valid. A friend pointed out to me that 2016 is 11111100000 in binary. [*]The problem is a program stored on the chip. The banks don't want to have= to exchange all of the cards (a really expensive solution), so they are = looking for a workaround. One was promised for Monday evening, but it has not yet materialized. ATMs are generally now accepting the cards again [meaning = they probably don't do any checking now...], but the Point of Sale terminals refuse to cooperate.
30 million cards are affected, and changing them would entail the owners = all having to learn a new code for their cards. Only German cards are affected. Many hundred thousand cards were just exchanged in November because of problems with the data of cards used in Spain having been available after a security breach.The company Gemalto was formed 2006 in the fusion of the French company Gemplus International and the Dutch Axalto Group. The company has 10.000 employees and produces bank cards, telephone SIM cards and electronic passports. The company reports a volume of 1,68 billion euros in 2008.
Consumer organizations and the consumer minister are blasting the banks = for informing the consumers only a little bit at a time.
- On a side note, customers of smartphones using Windows Mobile operating system have been noticing that incoming SMS messages also have the date
Still More: Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:58:34 +0100
Just a bit of scotch tape, sir!
The great Y2K+10 problem in Germany continues:
The chips were put on the cards to make them more difficult to duplicate. But it turns out, they at least have a fail-safe mode. If the chip is found to be malfunctioning or not there, the card readers resort = to reading the magnetic stripe.
Spiegel and others report that all it takes is a little Scotch tape over = the contacts of the card, and the readers will switch to fail-safe mode. Retailers now dispense tape at the cash registers.
It is great that they have this mode, but it kind of makes you wonder how safe these expensive chips really make you, if they can so easily be defeated.
Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, HTW Berlin, Treskowallee 8, 10313 Berlin Tel: +49-30-5019-2320