An ATM skimming device that can be inserted into the mouth of the cash machine’s card acceptance slot and used to read data directly off of chip-enabled credit or debit cards.
The “shimmer,” so named because it acts a shim that sits between the chip on the card and the chip reader in the ATM — recording the data on the chip as it is read by the ATM.
Cards equipped with a computer chip are more secure than cards which rely solely on magnetic stripes to store account data. Although the data that is typically stored on a card’s magnetic stripe is replicated inside the chip on chip-enabled cards, the chip contains an additional security components not found on a magnetic stripe.
One of those is a component known as an integrated circuit card verification value or “iCVV” for short. The iCVV differs from the card verification value (CVV) stored on the physical magnetic stripe, and protects against the copying of magnetic-stripe data from the chip and using that data to create counterfeit magnetic stripe cards.
Banks can run a simple check to see if any card inserted into an ATM is a counterfeit magnetic stripe card that is encoded with data stolen from a chip card. But there may be some instances in which banks are doing this checking incorrectly or not at all during some periods, and experts say the thieves have figured out which ATMs will accept magnetic stripe cards that are cloned from chip cards.
The bad guys have also learned which retailers are using the old card readers that do not yet accept the chip credit cards.
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