Ethical Hacking Gone Wrong In 1999: French Software Engineer Looks Back
This week in cybersecurity from the editors at Cybercrime Magazine
Sausalito, Calif. – May. 1, 2026
A quarter-century old article in The Wall Street Journal reported in 1998 that Serge Humpich, a 37-year-old (at the time) programmer approached the French association of bank-card issuers with the news that he had cracked the mathematical algorithm that had served as the main line of defense against fraud for the better part of a decade.
Humpich thought that the group’s 175 financial institutions, which in 2000 had almost 38 million cards in circulation, would be grateful to him for pointing out the vulnerability of their system. Through an intermediary, he proposed a contract that valued those services at 200 million French francs (30.5 million euros).
But things didn’t work out so simply. The bank-card group called the police, who began intercepting Mr. Humpich’s communications. They detained him in Sep. 1998, after a special team descended on the enormous farmhouse in Tournan where Mr. Humpich lived alone.
In Feb. 1999, Humpich got a 10-month suspended sentence for piracy and “fraudulent system access.” Along the way, he lost his job writing software for financial traders; he said that his employer got cold feet about having a headline-making hacker on his payroll.
And that wasn’t the end of it. In Mar. 2000, the secret bank-card algorithm appeared anonymously posted on a French cryptology Internet bulletin board. The storm ignited again, with the security of the nation’s electronic-payment system called into question. And so the understated Mr. Humpich was thrown back into the spotlight.
In a new Cybercrime Magazine Podcast episode, Humpich joins host Heather Engel to discuss his experience, the ethical hacking landscape over 25 years later, and more.
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