If it were that easy to abuse a credit card number on its own, then credit card fraud would be much, much higher than it is.
That's because the format of the credit card number is well known[1] and conforms to an ISO standard[2]. Numbers generated using publicly known issuer identifiers can then (usually) be checked for potential validity by running it through a standard checksum called the Luhn algorithm.[3] The Wikipedia article for the algorithm even helpfully provides a working Python script to do the work for you.
This is all well known stuff, and I seem to recall there being a joke file of "hacked" credit card numbers in the late 90s which I believe was just a list of numbers generated this way.
That's because the format of the credit card number is well known[1] and conforms to an ISO standard[2]. Numbers generated using publicly known issuer identifiers can then (usually) be checked for potential validity by running it through a standard checksum called the Luhn algorithm.[3] The Wikipedia article for the algorithm even helpfully provides a working Python script to do the work for you.
This is all well known stuff, and I seem to recall there being a joke file of "hacked" credit card numbers in the late 90s which I believe was just a list of numbers generated this way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_card_number
[2] http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhn_algorithm