Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 29, 2026

Pre-play attack

In the field of security engineering, a pre-play attack is a cryptographic attack in which an attacker prepares for the attack in advance by carrying out a simulated transaction while pretending to be the device to be attacked, and then repeats the attack a second time with the real device at a time when it is likely to carry out the same series of operations as in the simulation. The technique relies on being able to guess the content of the transaction in advance, something usually made possible by a poor choice of unpredictability within the system. The name is a play on "replay attack". Pre-play attacks are not very effective and chances of success are slim.

Last revised
May 29, 2026
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Wikipedia ↗

In the field of security engineering, a pre-play attack is a cryptographic attack in which an attacker prepares for the attack in advance by carrying out a simulated transaction while pretending to be the device to be attacked, and then repeats the attack a second time with the real device at a time when it is likely to carry out the same series of operations as in the simulation. The technique relies on being able to guess the content of the transaction in advance, something usually made possible by a poor choice of unpredictability within the system.12 The name is a play on "replay attack". Pre-play attacks are not very effective and chances of success are slim.

References

References

  1. Mike Bond; Omar Choudary; Murdoch, Steven J.; Sergei Skorobogatov; Ross Anderson (2012). "Chip and Skim: Cloning EMV cards with the pre-play attack". arXiv:1209.2531 [cs.CY].
  2. Mike Bond (September 10, 2012). "Chip and Skim: cloning EMV cards with the pre-play attack". Cambridge Computer Laboratory Security Research Group. Retrieved 2012-10-01.