Credit Card Skimming The Skim Reaper Partnerships Contact

Credit Card Skimming

Payment card fraud results in billions of dollars in losses annually. Adversaries increasingly acquire card data using skimmers, which are attached to legitimate payment devices including point of sale terminals, gas pumps, and ATMs. Detecting such devices can be difficult, and while many experts offer advice in doing so, there exists no large-scale characterization of skimmer technology to support such defenses.

The Skim Reaper

We have partnered with law enforcement agencies to comprehensively characterize skimmers, with the goal of designing and delivering strong tools to reduce this kind of crime. As a result, we created the Skim Reaper, which specifically targets overlay and deep-insert skimmers.

While currently a research prototype, the Skim Reaper has already been used by multiple law enforcement agencies in the United States to successfully identify and remove card skimming devices.

Partnerships

We have been extremely fortunate to partner with law enforcement throughout the course of our efforts. We are particularly grateful to the Financial Crimes Task Force of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

Are you a law enforcement agency, financial institution, gas station or payment processor interested in joining our expanded pilot study? Interested in helping us scale manufacturing and deployment? Contact us!

Contact

Project Lead:

Patrick Traynor
Associate Professor, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)
Co-Director, Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS) Research

Email: traynor@ufl.edu
Phone: 352-294-2093