SparkFun’s Skimmer Scanner Helps Detect Gas Pump Skimmers

September 25, 2017         By: Steven Anderson

If you pay at the pump with a mobile payment mechanism like a card or the like, you’re likely familiar with the skimmer. A simple device that can be quickly installed into a gas pump, the skimmer can land credit card information just from the card’s use at the pump. Now, with a new app from SparkFun known as Skimmer Scanner, the risk of getting hit with a skimmer falls through the floor.

Skimmer Scanner is a free app built around open-source tools released for the Android system only, so Apple users may have to pick up a separate device to serve as the skimmer detector at the pump. Skimmer Scanner works to detect a certain kind of Bluetooth signal—HC-05 specifically—and tries to establish contact. Once it spots such a connection, it alerts the app’s user that there’s likely a skimmer in that particular pump, and it should be avoided accordingly.

Since the app itself is a very basic app, it doesn’t hold any information, which means it itself can’t be exploited or hacked to get access to information involved. Early reports suggest the app works routinely and quite well, so it could be a good way to spot a skimmer before it gets access to your data.

Skimmers can be readily acquired, with reports suggesting that such devices can be had fairly readily online for as little as $10 apiece. If the purchases can be made in bitcoin, then literally anyone can have such a device on hand and the purchase profoundly difficult to trace. A simple app that detects these devices in play, meanwhile, can render most of the operation useless. Granted, the skimmer detectors only work on one particular frequency—if anyone ever uses a Bluetooth signal other than HC-05, most of this app’s functionality will likely be gone with it—but given what we know so far, the skimmer detector should do the job just fine by itself in many cases.

With skimmers comparatively easy to come by and put in place, it’s clear the regular user needs a tool that’s equally easy to use and work with. Thanks to SparkFun’s Skimmer Scanner, that tool may finally be available.