A new research from Cambridge University researchers has shown that the chip and pin payment including cards has some weaknesses.

Researchers found that cards are prone to cloning despite several earlier suggestions that the chip and pin technology is safe and secure. The researchers said that weak implementation of cryptography methods were the main reason for the flaws.

The researchers have said that some banks have systematically suppressed information about the vulnerabilities of the payment systems used by them. They presented the findings at the cryptography conference in Leuven, Belgium on Tuesday.

The researchers said that even as chip and pin technology has been used for more than a decade, "it was only recently "starting to come under proper scrutiny from academics, media and industry alike". They said that every time a transaction is made, a unique number is created to validate the transaction.

The unpredictable number has be created randomly but it was discovered that equipment meant for creating these numbers was highly predictable as it used dates or timestamps that have been used several times.

Researcher Mike Bond wrote in a blog post, "If you can predict, you can record everything you need from momentary access to a chip card to play it back and impersonate the card at a future date and location. You can as good as clone the chip. It's called a pre-play attack."