Information Security

The risks from Cyber cime - Hacking - Loss of Data Privacy - Identity Theft and other topical threats - can be greatly reduced by implementation of robust IT Security controls ...

Retired Member 

A Multifaceted Approach to Fraud Prevention

Fraud is serious business. A recent report from PwC cited that hacking attacks overall are costing UK businesses at least £10bn a year. Fraud reduces customer confidence and brand integrity. Merchants however can fight back by taking measures to limit fraud exposure from the outset. How? By implementing comprehensive fraud and risk management pro

28 June 2010 /security /payments

Retired Member 

Australia's EMV roll out bites into card fraud

Payment card fraud statistics are not published by every country, which is one reason why the UK’s statistics are so often reported and quoted, and are used as evidence of the impact of the introduction of Chip and PIN EMV cards on fraud. Another country that publishes payment fraud statistics is Australia. It is going through a roll-out of EMV ...

18 June 2010 /security /payments

Retired Member 

Barclays compromise financial privacy

On September 23, 2009 I discovered a vulnerability on Barclays online banking service which permitted a remote adversary to peruse customer bank statements. Barclays were immediately notified, but defended their system design as a balance between privacy and usability. The Financial Service Authority (FSA) and Information Commisioner's Office (ICO...

01 June 2010 /security

Retired Member 

A bridge to mobile payments

What’s it going to take to get contactless payments off the ground? Contactless card payments have been proving more of a slow burner than a big bang, and the introduction of mobile phones with embedded NFC capabilities that could be used for contactless payments has also been slow. One of the issues with contactless card payments has been that re...

16 April 2010 /payments

Retired Member 

Transiting to open-loop contactless payments

If you don’t live in a large city, the revolution in mass transit payments that has taken place over the last few years may have passed you by. Cities as far apart as Melbourne, Beijing, London, Salt Lake City and Singapore have all introduced contactless smart cards for their transit systems. In these cities a single contactless transit card can ...

01 April 2010 /payments

Elton Cane Digital product delivery at News Corp Australia

Banks accept Dubai assassins' stolen IDs

Quite a few countries around the world had passports of their citizens copied as part of the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. While the photos disemminated by the media were undoubtedly of the assassins, the rest of the details were of real citizens. Many media outlets in Australia happily splashed hi-res images of the full passp...

01 March 2010 /security

Steven Murdoch Royal Society University Research Fellow at University College London

Reliability of Chip and PIN evidence in banking disputes

It has now been two weeks since we published our paper “Chip and PIN is broken”. Here, we presented the no-PIN attack, which allows criminals to use a stolen Chip and PIN card, without having to know its PIN. The paper has triggered a considerable amount of discussion, on Light Blue Touchpaper, Finextra, and elsewhere. One of the topics which has...

26 February 2010 /security /regulation

Retired Member 

Chip and PIN - not perfect, but the best we have

Cambridge University computer scientists’ discovery of a way to carry out transactions without knowing a card's PIN hit the headlines on Friday; however consumers should not lose faith in credit card security. Chip and PIN is by far and away the most secure way of protecting payment transactions currently available. No security system can claim to...

15 February 2010 /security /payments

Steven Murdoch Royal Society University Research Fellow at University College London

Chip and PIN is broken

There was a 9-minute film on Newsnight yesterday evening (available online) showing some research by Saar Drimer, Ross Anderson, Mike Bond and me. We demonstrate a middleperson attack on EMV which lets criminals use stolen chip and PIN cards without knowing the PIN. Our technical paper “Chip and PIN is Broken” explains how. It has been causing qui...

12 February 2010 /security

Retired Member 

False Accusation leads PAYPAL to disclose Accounts of others

If you find your name in this list, it means that you are one of the many collateral victims of a psychopath who was able to manipulate the french authorities (in the south of france) to requisition information from EBAY and Paypal by making a false accusation against someone. One of the collateral victims is the wife of Senator John Kerry. One c...

07 February 2010 /security /payments