Somebody unauthorized in India managed to withdraw cash from my credit card account. The card I use (and which they claim to have used) is a German Visa prepaid card issued by Postbank. It has a chip and a magnet strip.
I'm interested in the technical side of PIN verification. IIUC the thief must have had a physical card and a PIN for cash withdrawal (as opposed to non-cash transactions like purchases which can be done without a PIN).
The bank representative I talked to claimed that it is possible for anybody who has read the card to create a duplicate. Is that true for both the magnet strip and the chip? I always thought that the chip was introduced to prevent forging.
The representative also claimed that a matching PIN can be computed from the card data, but I think he was not sure about the details. Is that true? I remember that ages ago it was possible to use an ATM which was not online and withdraw money with a forged PIN which tested true against the local card data but would not have passed a verification by the bank. Is that what happened here, e.g. are there still ATMs which are not online?