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Your Expired Visa Card Could Be ‘Zombified’ to Make Contactless Payments
Roundup: expired Visa cards can be revived for contactless payments via NFC relay; plus Apple spyware warnings and Ukraine cyberattacks on Russian e-commerce.
WIRED's weekly security roundup leads with research showing expired Visa contactless cards can be revived to make new payments through an NFC man-in-the-middle attack that alters the card's expiration date. The roundup also covers Apple sending an unprecedented volume of spyware warnings to users and Ukrainian cyber and drone attacks against a major Russian e-commerce company.
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Researchers find a loophole that lets expired credit cards make unauthorized payments
UMass Amherst researchers showed at USENIX Security 2026 that NFC relay attacks can rewrite unprotected expiration dates, letting expired Visa contactless cards keep making payments.
UMass Amherst researchers presented the Zombie Card attack at USENIX Security 2026, using two smartphones to relay and modify NFC payment data from expired Visa cards. The expiration date lies outside the card's digital signature coverage in Visa Kernel 3, and one major US bank accepted $1-$500 test purchases plus live $2.79 and $3.19 purchases with rewritten dates. Mastercard, American Express, and Discover rejected tampered dates; researchers notified Visa in May 2025 and no CVE or confirmed fix existed at publication.
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Cybersecurity M&A Roundup: 33 Deals Announced in August 2026
SecurityWeek tallied 33 cybersecurity M&A deals announced in August 2026, headlined by Visa's $2.4B BioCatch buy and Munich Re's $575M At-Bay acquisition.
Thirty-three cybersecurity M&A deals were announced in August 2026. The largest include Visa acquiring fraud-detection firm BioCatch for $2.4 billion in cash and Munich Re buying cyber insurtech At-Bay for $575 million through its HSB unit. Fortinet acquired AI security company Virtue AI, Palo Alto Networks bought agentic workflow platform Console, Cribl acquired AI-native SOC startup Radiant Security, and Deel bought deepfake-detection firm Clarity for a reported $40-50 million. Brinqa, Datavault AI, Echo, and Kiteworks also announced acquisitions.
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