Samsung Pay is safe despite hack, says Samsung

Samsung emphasizes that its mobile payment system is absolutely safe even after the hackers attempted to break into the corporate networks of LoopPay, which the Korean tech giant acquired in February. LoopPay developed the technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) that’s the backbone of Samsung Pay.

Three servers on LoopPay’s internal office networks handling emails, files and printing were attacked by hackers known as the Codoso Group or Sunshock Group. LoopPay acted immediately and appointed independent professional security teams to address the grave issue. The Chinese hackers attempted to break into the technology that’s key to the success of Samsung Pay and apparently wanted make their own bogus version.

“The first thing to know is that Samsung Pay was not impacted and at no point was any personal payment information at risk,” said Samsung.

The electronics giant further said that “Security is a number one priority at Samsung —and always will be. Samsung is committed to securing and protecting user data to the highest industry standards.”

The targeted devices were identified and quarantined right away. The company also put additional safeguards in place to eliminate further attacks. Samsung confirmed the targeted networks are physically separate from Samsung Pay and the company is confident the payment system is absolutely safe and secure.

Each transaction through Samsung Pay uses a digital token to replace a card number. Retailers and merchants never see or store the card data. The encrypted token can only be used to make payments. MST generates a unique code whenever a customer uses the mobile payment service to make payment at contactless terminals.

Samsung introduced Samsung Pay in South Korea in August followed by a U.S. launch on Sept. 28. The mobile payment system challenges Apple Pay and Android Pay that only work with Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology.

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