Forensic analysis of skimming devices for credit fraud detection

Magnetic stripe cards are widely used by many different organizations to provide both convenience and security. These types of cards are often relied on identification and personal authentication. However, they are not designed to withstand attacks that use the sophisticated technologies available today. For instance, skimming takes advantages of the fact that the digital content of a magnetic stripe card can be copied with perfection. The goal of this research paper is to introduce the range of devices available for manipulating magnetic stripe card data, demonstrate the ease by which magnetic stripe cards are often fraudulently cloned and analyze how such devices can be processed in a forensically sound manner.