“Square created their tiny, portable card reader to revolutionize the credit card processing business. As it turns out, they may have unwittingly revolutionized card skimming, too. Researchers Alexandrea Mellen and John Moore were on hand at this year’s Black Hat conference demonstrating that it only takes 10 minutes to turn an ordinary Square reader into a portable skimmer. It simply requires very little work, and a high level of skill isn’t needed to pull it off. All the duo had to do to hack the reader was to solder in a short length of wire to bypass Square’s built-in encryption chip. Once the wire is in place, the reader can then slurp up and spit out credit card swipe data in the clear.”
http://www.geek.com/mobile/hackers-turn-square-reader-into-card-skimmer-in-under-10-minutes-1630512/