Probably not, but the FBI Raids Chinese Point-of-Sale Giant PAX Technology report from Krebs on Security has some thrilling bits:
“FBI and MI5 are conducting an intensive investigation into PAX,” the source said. “A major US payment processor began asking questions about network packets originating from PAX terminals and were not given any good answers.”
The source said two major financial providers — one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom — had already begun pulling PAX terminals from their payment infrastructure, a claim that was verified by two different sources.
“My sources say that there is tech proof of the way that the terminals were used in attack ops,” the source said. “The packet sizes don’t match the payment data they should be sending, nor does it correlate with telemetry these devices might display if they were updating their software. PAX is now claiming that the investigation is racially and politically motivated.”
Krebs on Security
FBI, MI5, unnamed sources? Sounds like a spy novel. The original Jacksonville WOKV report is down to earth local news reporting with the official statement from the FBI: “The FBI Jacksonville Division, in partnership with Homeland Security Investigations, Customs and Border Protection, Department of Commerce, and Naval Criminal Investigative Services, and with the support of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, is executing a court-authorized search at this location in furtherance of a federal investigation. We are not aware of any physical threat to the surrounding community related to this search. The investigation remains active and ongoing and no additional information can be confirmed at this time.”
PAX NFC terminals and POS systems support EMV, FeliCa and MIFARE protocols and are used extensively in Japan in nationwide POS systems such as FamiMart and Doutor Coffee chains. However it’s important to remember that each protocol has a hardware certification process, for EMVCo, for FeliCa Networks and for MIFARE. Card companies also have their own hardware security and certification. And even though the story sounds scary, we don’t know what ‘major financial provider’ POS systems are pulling PAX readers*, what hardware models are involved and what kind of POS software they run (provided by PAX? Developed in-house?), or what exactly the FBI are investigating.
That said, this is much more real and interesting than the silly Apple Pay EMV Express Transit VISA security scare story pushed by the BBC, mindlessly repeated by tech sites and dubious ‘security experts’ who scare people into buying their ‘services’. The so-called Apple Pay EMV Express Transit VISA exploit was just a lab experiment, this is happening in the field. The PAX story won’t get much press however because it does’t have ‘Apple Pay’ in the headline. At least not yet…I’m sure some media hack out there will come up with one, something like ‘Apple Pay sends your personal payment data to China’. Only then will people start paying attention.
*UPDATE 2021-11-03
Bloomberg reports FIS Worldpay (also based in Jacksonville next door to PAX…interesting eh?) is pulling PAX NFC readers from client systems and replacing them with Verifone and Ingenico NFC readers. FIS said, “While we have no evidence that data running through PAX POS devices has been compromised, we have been working directly with clients to replace those devices with other options at no cost to them and with as little disruption to their business as possible.” No evidence but Worldpay is replacing PAX readers anyway…based on what exactly, heresy?
PAX NFC readers comprise less than 5% of Worldpay client POS installations so we’re not talking big numbers. Meanwhile PAX has issued a long winded statement (PAX Technology announcement and resumption of trading) addressing and refuting the security risk claims from Krebs and FIS saying it’s only a geolocation feature. We don’t know which PAX reader models are involved but I suspect they are Android based. That’s the problem with all those crappy Android OS based POS+NFC all in one terminals: not only do they have lousy Android performance, they have all the Android security risks too. Dedicated hardware is way better, performance-wise and security-wise.
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