High profile Internet credit card thefts should become less frequent as universal standards are created to thwart hacker attacks, according to Jeff Portelli, vice president of MasterCard Asia-Pacific.
Technology is working just as hard for Net security as it is for cyber pirates, and it's almost ready for m-commerce (mobile-commerce) in Taiwan.
Most consumers in Taiwan agree that buying products over the Internet still requires a leap of faith. According to surveys, 70 percent of Taiwan's six million Internet users do not make purchases over the Net.
Those surveyed listed questions of product quality and delivery time. But the majority of consumers surveyed by 7-Eleven Taiwan feared someone might steal their credit card numbers.
Stories of hackers stealing thousands of credit card numbers at a time over the Net have helped fuel these fears. In one case in the US last year, a group of hackers stole 900,000 card numbers in one swoop, making US$45.7 million in purchases before being cut off.
"If you take a look at the last five years, particularly the last 24 months, I don't think there's been a single attack on an account number as it's flowing down the pipeline," said Portelli.
"That is highly unlikely. What you do tend to see are the few instances where -- the merchants didn't have the right security on their back end, they didn't have the firewalls. So people were able to go in and steal their account numbers."
In the days before computer networks linked merchants to credit card companies, transactions were done with a telephone call and carbon paper. Customers were told to keep their carbons so the account number could not be reused.
At that time, when a customer called MasterCard to report a lost or stolen card, customer service would collect those card numbers and publish a weekly `hotcard list.' This gave pickpockets a week or more to use a stolen card -- more if the store did not have or check the hotcard list.
Now when a person reports a card lost or stolen, "it takes 2 seconds to get that card number out of the system globally," said Portelli.
Although the Internet helps hackers break in to systems, it also helps card companies keep track of accounts.
According to Portelli, MasterCard centers around the world monitor transactions for any irregularities and can pinpoint the exact location of the terminal trying to use a card number listed as lost or stolen.
"The second it's happening, the system knows what's going on and the system will react accordingly," he said. "While the fraudster is sitting there doing a fraud attack, there's a knock on the door and it's the Hong Kong police coming in saying 'guess what, you're under arrest.'"
Protecting people's financial information over a mobile phone system, however, is trickier. According to Portelli, one of the first steps to m-commerce (mobile-commerce) is getting companies to agree on universal practices and standards that would help stymie cyber attacks.
This means ensuring banks, stock trading firms and other financial targets have the computer systems necessary to detect and stop a cyber-attack.
Since stock trading appears to be one of the first m-commerce financial transactions to gain popularity here in Taiwan, securities firms and corresponding banks need the firewalls and secure lines to protect stock trades and bank account information.
In a speech earlier this year, Benito Lopez, a consultant at Ericsson said mobile banking and other financial transactions on mobile phones in Taiwan are at least a year away due to problems getting security systems in place that work with wireless technology.
Although the technology is already available in Scandinavia, Lopez explained that wireless electronic transactions over WAP are difficult to secure. The trick with wireless, and any electronic transaction, he said, is, "how to scramble the information so nobody can understand it and nobody can break it."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique