Registers – Records – Magnetic
Reexamination Certificate
1998-10-08
2001-03-20
Le, Thien M. (Department: 2876)
Registers
Records
Magnetic
C235S375000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06202933
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates in general to a transaction card and methods for making and reading and apparatus therefor. In particular the invention relates to a transaction card having encrypted portions thereon to reduce the likelihood that such cards may be produced in bulk as part of a forgery scheme and used to defraud a merchant. The transaction card may be a proprietary credit card or proprietary stored value card as well as other types of card.
One of the problems associated with the issuance of credit cards, debit cards and other transaction cards capable of either holding stored value or being representative of stored value or line of credit is that they are subject to wholesale forgery. A number of attempts have been made to prevent such card forgery. For instance VISA and MasterCard systems use card validation encryption on the magnetic stripe. Unfortunately this has been found to be inadequate. Other schemes have been suggested including the use of paramagnetic strips, fractal encoding and computer holographic representations on the card. All of these have failed for various reasons, in part because many of them require the use of specialized counter-card forgery methods requiring specialized equipment. One of the problems with such equipment is that it must be added to the usual point-of-sale terminal in a retailer's floor operation and the cost of avoiding the losses for forgery tends to escalate due to the capital costs of the addition of such equipment.
What is needed then is a convenient low-cost method of insuring the authenticity of a transaction card in order to avoid accepting a forged card as legitimate and providing goods and services as a result thereof.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
A transaction card and methods and apparatus for producing and carrying on transactions with respect to the card is herein disclosed. The transaction card consists of a card stock having a magnetic stripe formed thereon, the magnetic stripe being able to accept a magnetic pattern indicative of an account number associated with a particular customer who is to be the legitimate holder of the card. The account number may also be printed or embossed on the transaction card to allow the card to be used if the magnetic stripe is unreadable. The account number could be positioned at any convenient location on the card stock. In order to prevent or reduce the likelihood of a merchant or other person accepting a forged card (as opposed to a counterfeit card) as a legitimate card a barcode is provided on the front of the card which includes an encrypted version of at least a portion of the information contained on the magnetic stripe. The barcode, however could be positioned at any convenient location on the card stock. The barcode has formed thereon a barcode pattern which represents the result of an encryption process wherein an account number is operated upon by the secure hash algorithm, SHA-1 to produce a 160-bit message digest. The resulting hash or message digest is truncated to 64 bits in order to be able to include an encrypted version of the message digest on a 24-digit barcode of standard type. A private key is then selected as being associated with a batch number associated with the transaction card and the private key is used as a private key for elliptic curve encryption of the truncated hash. The resulting encrypted truncated hash is then converted from hexadecimal format to decimal format and stored as a barcode on the card. This method is not dependent on the proper functioning of the magnetic stripe, the magnetic stripe reader, nor the barcode scanner. It is not unusual for any of these technologies to fail This method will function as long as the account number and barcode number can be manually entered in the process.
When the transaction card is presented the magnetic stripe is read or manually entered and the barcode is scanned or manually entered and information related both to the batch and account number is extracted therefrom. The batch number is used to select a public key. The public key is used to decrypt the encrypted hash value to provide a plain text or open 64-bit message digest. The account information extracted from the magnetic stripe or manually entered is then processed using the Secure Hash Algorithm and truncated to 64 bits to provide a 64-bit message digest representative of the account number. The message digest resulting from the barcode is then compared to the message digest resulting from the account number and if the two match the point-of-sale equipment continues to process the transaction. If the two do not match, the point-of-sale equipment will halt processing of the transaction due to the account information, whether on the magnetic stripe or on the face of the card itself as embossed or printed characters, likely having been forged.
It is a principal aspect of the present invention to provide a transaction card which provides encrypted security thereon in the form of a separate encryption storage device stored as a barcode. It is another aspect of the present invention to provide a secure transaction card which is difficult to forge but which may easily have its authenticity tested by conventional point-of-sale terminal equipment and magnetic stripe reading and barcode scanning hardware. It is another aspect of the present invention that it is not dependent on proper functioning of the magnetic stripe, magnetic card reader or barcode scanner.
Other aspects of the present invention will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art upon a perusal of the specification and claims in light of the accompanying drawings.
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patent: 60-19279 (1985-01-01), None
Overfield, Jr. Richard E.
Poore Ralph Spencer
Ernst & Young U.S. LLP
Fitch Even Tabin & Flannery
Le Thien M.
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