For every new 'secure' system, there are hundreds of people who are trying to hack it.
Usually, they find it more difficult than this - from Wired:
Flaw in New ‘Secure’ Credit Cards Would Let Hackers Steal $1M Per Card
As U.S. banks and retailers are barreling toward a 2015 deadline to replace magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards with more secure cards that come embedded with a microchip, researchers have announced a critical flaw in the card system.
According to researchers at Newcastle University in the UK, the card system developed by VISA for use in the United Kingdom fails to recognize transactions made in non-UK foreign currencies and can therefore be tricked into approving any transaction up to 999,999.99.
What’s more, because the cards allow for contactless transactions, wherein consumers need only to have the card in the vicinity of a reader without swiping it, a thief carrying a card reader designed to read a card that’s stored in a wallet or purse could conduct fraudulent transactions without the victim ever removing their card.
Since the transaction is done offline without going through a retailer’s point-of-sale system, no other security checks are done.
“With just a mobile phone we created a POS terminal that could read a card through a wallet,” Martin Emms, lead researcher of the project that uncovered the flaw, noted in a statement about the findings. “All the checks are carried out on the card rather than the terminal so at the point of transaction, there is nothing to raise suspicions. By pre-setting the amount you want to transfer, you can bump your mobile against someone’s pocket or swipe your phone over a wallet left on a table and approve a transaction.”
In tests the researchers conducted, transactions took less than a second to be approved.
The US cards require a PIN to be entered as well as the pass-by so they are secure from this hack. For now.
I wonder how many cards have already been rolled out...
