You can't have failed to notice reports of a major Internet crime wave: phishing. This means duping consumers into divulging financial information using spoof Web sites.
Every Internet user in Britain must have received a phish by now: "Hello, this is Barclays Bank (or Citibank, or Paypal, or whoever) and we're just checking (or testing, or upgrading...) our security system, so please click on this link and enter your username and password (or card number and PIN)."
The link is, of course, not to the bank, but to the fraudsters' Web site. Once the customer enters their details, the fraudsters whisk them away for their own use: this use generally being to loot the bank account as quickly as possible.
If the fraudsters send out 10 million "Citibank" e-mails, and 1 percent of the hapless recipients are Citibank customers, and 1 percent of them are fooled, the fraudster could gain access to 100 Citibank accounts. It works. Major British banks have all admitted that accounts have been accessed and money stolen.
What is to be done? Phishing is possible because authentication of online services is so weak, consisting of nothing more than basic password authentication. It's just impossible to stop this sort of attack -- as in the case of so many other Internet attacks -- without better authentication. As Bill Gates said back in 2000 -- and as I've been saying for the last decade -- the industry needs to move to smart cards. At last, it might finally be on the horizon.
In the UK, banks are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on smart cards for "chip and PIN." As the advertisements have made clear, chip and PIN is targeted at shops in the real world. But suppose it could be used with your PC, TV or phone as well? And suppose it could be used without having to have a smart card reader in your PC, TV or phone?
As it happens, the banks have been developing the specifications for such a solution: it goes by the name of "token authentication."
The idea is that your bank would give you a small device, a bit like a pocket calculator. When you want to connect to your bank online you put your bank card into the calculator and punch in your PIN.
The device will generate and display a code number which you then enter into the Web site or tell the person on the phone. From this number, the bank knows that you had a real card and entered the right PIN.
Since you have to have both the card and the PIN, this is known as a "two factor" authentication, as opposed to the "one factor" password.
A simple, feasible solution. If industry starts to use the smart cards that are already being deployed, the phishers really will have had their chips.
Dave Birch is a director of Control Hyperion.
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