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EMV CAP

Security På svenska → Updated: 2026-10-30

Mastercard's scheme for letting a bank card's chip generate one-time codes for online banking, via a small standalone reader.

The Chip Authentication Program arrived in the mid-2000s. The customer inserts the card into a reader with a keypad, enters the PIN and gets a code the chip derived from an application cryptogram. For transfers the reader can also take the amount and the payee account, binding the code to that specific payment. Visa's equivalent is called Dynamic Passcode Authentication. British banks handed out readers by the million, Barclays under the name PINsentry.

In 2009 Saar Drimer, Steven Murdoch and Ross Anderson showed in "Optimised to Fail" how leaky the design was. The reader reported whether the PIN was correct, so a stolen card and any compatible reader were enough to guess it, and the modes were similar enough that a customer could be tricked into signing the wrong thing. Mobile authentication apps have since taken the reader's place in the hall drawer.

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