Card Skimming
Noun · Security & Infosec
Definitions
Card Skimming is an attack technique in which an adversary captures payment card data from compromised readers, overlays, or e-commerce skimmer code. Defenders analyze it to understand prerequisites, affected trust boundaries, and likely telemetry, then reduce risk with layered controls such as validation, hardening, rate limits, segmentation, and high-quality logging for investigation and response.
In plain English: Card Skimming is a way attackers abuse systems or trust relationships, and defenders counter it with better design, validation, monitoring, and layered controls.
Example: "During the assessment, the team simulated Card Skimming against a staging service, confirmed the weakness with logs and telemetry, and then added tighter validation, safer defaults, and monitoring so the same technique would trigger an alert in production."
Related Terms
- Account Takeover
- Anti-Debugging
- Anti-Tamper
- API Abuse
- Application Allowlisting
- Binary Analysis
- Binary Patching
- Click Fraud
- Command and Control
- Data Exfiltration
- Data Poisoning
- Denial of Service
- Directory Traversal
- DoS Amplification
- Double Free
- Drive-by Download
- Eavesdropping
- Evil Twin
- Integer Overflow
- Jailbreak
- Kerberoasting
- MAC Flooding
- Macro Virus
- Malicious Insider
- Man-in-the-Browser
- Mass Assignment
- Man-in-the-Middle