What Is Account Testing?
Account testing is the criminal practice of submitting fraudulent authorizations into the payments system. The most common types are:
• Active Account Testing: Used to confirm whether an account is active, this method results in authorizations for a large variety of accounts. The majority of such authorizations are approved.
• Brute Force Testing: Used to derive the card verification values. A maximum of 1,000 attempts are required to derive a three-digit code, and a smart phone can complete this process in seconds. With brute force testing, the ratio of authorizations to accounts tested is much higher, dozens or hundreds per account; the majority are declined.