PALO ALTO, Calif. — In late 2013, an A.T.M. in Kiev started dispensing cash at seemingly random times of day. No one had put in a card or touched a button. Cameras showed that the piles of money had been swept up by customers who appeared lucky to be there at the right moment.
There is no doubt there are bad people in this world. All one has to do is turn on the evening news or open a Web browser. Last week’s shocker was the beheading of Colleen Hufford in an Oklahoma food processing plant.
As U.S. banks and retailers are barreling toward a 2015 deadline to replace magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards with more secure cards that come embedded with a microchip, researchers have announced a critical flaw in the card system.
