Today the Government “launches” its National Fraud Strategy. I qualify the verb because none of the quality papers seems to be running the story, and the press releases have not yet appeared on the websites of the Attorney General or the Ministry of Justice. And well might Baroness Scotland be ashamed. The Strategy is a … Continue reading National Fraud Strategy
People often ask me what can they do to prevent themselves from being victims of card fraud when they pay with their cards at shops or use them in ATMs (for on-line card fraud tips see e-victims.org, for example). My short answer is usually “not much, except checking your statements and reporting anomalies to the … Continue reading Card fraud — what can one do?
This week, Nick Clegg, leader of the UK Liberal Democrat Party, and David Howarth, MP for Cambridgeshire, visited our hardware security lab for a demonstration of Chip & PIN fraud techniques. They used this visit to announce their new party policy on protections against identity fraud. At present, credit rating companies are exempt from aspects … Continue reading Liberal Democrat leader visits our lab
Just like George Lucas can’t help but return to his old projects, I have been returning to mine. After three years of stagnation, I am pleased to announce the re-launch of phantomwithdrawals.com, freshly re-vamped, updated and turned into a wiki editable by the general public. In fact, it’s not just great artists like Mr. Lucas … Continue reading Card Wars: The Phantom Menace
This morning Jane Badger was acquitted of fraud at Birmingham Crown Court. The judge found there was no case to answer. Her case was remarkably similar to that of John Munden, about whom I wrote here (and in my book here). Like John, she worked for the police; like John, she complained to a bank … Continue reading Justice, in one case at least
I appeared on “You and Yours” (Radio 4) today at 12.35 with an official from the Financial Ombudsman Service, after I coauthored a FIPR submission to a review of the service which is currently being conducted by Lord Hunt. Our submission looks at three cases in particular in which the ombudsman decided in favour of … Continue reading Financial Ombudsman losing it?
Steven Murdoch and I have previously discussed issues concerning the tamper resistance of payment terminals and the susceptibility of Chip & PIN to relay attacks. Basically, the tamper resistance protects the banks but not the customers, who are left to trust any of the devices they provide their card and PIN to (the hundreds of … Continue reading Distance bounding against smartcard relay attacks
A recurring media story over the past half year has been that “a person’s identity can be stolen from new biometric passports”, which are “easy to clone” and therefore “not fit for purpose”. Most of these reports began with a widely quoted presentation by Lukas Grunwald in Las Vegas in August 2006, and continued with … Continue reading Passports and biometric certificates
EMV (or “Chip and PIN” as it’s known in the UK) is changing the fraud landscape, no doubt about it. Counterfeit card fraud at POS is down, card theft is down, card-not-present is up, phishing is up, ATM fraud is up. Fraud migrates, we get the picture. But as EMV reaches maximal deployment in the … Continue reading The ATM Protection Racket
Markus points us to a story on card fraud by German TV reporter Sabine Wolf, who reported some of our recent work on how cards get cloned.She reports a number of cases in which German holidaymakers had cards cloned in Italy. In one case, a sniffer in a chip and PIN terminal at a skilift … Continue reading Growing epidemic of card cloning