alt Hacker NewsSome have speculated that the entire credit card system is compromised, end to end. I think the real question is why NSA didn't intervene in the early 1990s. Online commerce was just beginning, and the importance of electronic funds transfer was obvious, but the method wasn't set in stone. NSA knew about public key crypto well before the rest of us did. They could have helped set up very secure electronic payments, but chose not to for unknown reasons.
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bagels • yesterday at 9:08 PM
"The RSA algorithm was publicly described in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman at MIT"
yieldcrv • yesterday at 9:01 PM
NSA prefers compromised security so that answers your question
Credit card system was already around for decades before though
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What do you mean by "compromised end to end"? A compromise implies that something isn't working as originally designed.
Credit and debit cards (except for 3DS and EMV) are working exactly as designed; the design just isn't very good from a security perspective.