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One-Time Pads To Protect Electronic Bank Access
dummkopf writes "CNN reports how Scandinavian banks issue one-time passwords to protect customers' accounts when these use the same password for other, i.e., more insecure email accounts. Having a bank account in the U.S. (with a trusted and well known Bank OF nAtional reach) I always wondered why the security was soooo poor: while it has changed slightly now (better usernames/passwords) it used to be the case that your username was your SSN and your password a number code (!). I am sure most of you will agree with me that this is scary... I live now in Switzerland where one-time passwords for online banking are a must and where my current bank is one of the 'crappy' ones with a little card with one-time passwords like mentioned in the CNN Story. The nicer ones even give you credit-card-size RSA password generator which is combined with a calculator you can keep in your pocket. Hence my question: are others also worried about poor security of online banking in the U.S.? Are there banks which are better than the ones mentioned above?"
I'm poor.
Banks in Germany always required you to have:
Login & Password.
And then for EACH transaction an TAN (TransActionNumber) which was a one time password that they mailed to you in a batch of I think 25.
So in order to complete a transaction you not only needed the username and Password but also a TAN.
More secure than they do it here, where you just log in and then it's a free for all.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
US banks have security? When did they get that?
Combining something you have (the scratch-0ff bit, an ATM card, or an RSA token) with something you know (a password) will soon become the standard for most everything. I for one can't wait.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
but I don't have any money anyways.
Hence my question: are others also worried about poor security of online banking in the U.S.?
In my bank the online banking site allows me to check the balance and that's about it. Doesn't leave too much to the intruder.
I can also contact the bank via e-mail and ask to change address or anything else, but that would require a phone call confirmation as well.
My local bank simply has us use our name to sign in, and a password we choose. Because I choose passwords, and I don't have much money, i never thought of this as very scary. I guess that in the event that somone tried to steal my money though, I would be quite vulnerable. One better technique that I've learned is to spread your money through multiple accounts. No one will want to waste much time breaking into a few accouns with small soums of money when someone out their has lots in one account.
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American Express I believe offers one-time CC#s for use online. Does anyone know anything about this?
Single-use passwords are not the same thing as a one-time pad, which is a form of encryption. However, one-time passwords do sound like a good idea. Given reasonably good encryption like in SSL, then password management becomes a weak point - which this scheme addresses. (Just parroting Schneier, and wondering if this scheme will get mention in the next Crypto-gram newsletter.)
I have the same thing in the netherlands with ABN, a 'pin pad' that I pop my card into. I type in my PIN to authenticate, then the challenge the bank website gives me, then the pin pad returns a result I type in to perform a log in or a payment/transfer. .. don't let your kids play with it.. you'll find yourself locked out of your bank card haha
I do my banking with a local bank here in Saudi Arabia which has recently upgraded all its ATM machines with biometrics. I need only to register my fingerprint with the bank and then swipe it at the ATM to do my banking. Years ahead of its time.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Equipping your 1 million customers with some kind of secure random password generation smart card probably costs $40 each, both for the card and programming as well as associated infrastructure and overhead costs. So this security is a $40 million expense with no real benefit for the bank itself. Add in the costs of customer and staff training, eventual replacement of cards due to wear/loss/theft/whatever, and this is a very expensive proposition.
...) it's not likely to happen unless it's either legislated or if the cost of fraud gets so high that it forces banks to consider something like this.
As much as I'd love to see this implemented at every bank (heck, PayPal, eBay,
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The article in question is describing a one-time password, but not a one-time pad. A one-time pad must be as long as the message being encrypted.
One caveat I had about this article was this....
"Outfitting 1 million customers with such devices could cost $20 million, while Internet fraud for those customers amounts to "tens of thousands at most," said Tony Chew, director of technology risk supervision at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Singapore banks thus limit dynamic passwords to fund transfers, he said."
This is a pretty bold statement coming from the director of technology risk at eBay. eBay has pretty much become the breeding ground for scams and frauds. With millions of items up for auction at any one time this doesn't make any sense. I believe I read an article several months back that eBay estimated that at any one time about 3% of their auctions are fradulent. A small number in comparison to the number of auctions that are ongoing. Doing a totally unscientific experiment, I averaged about 3,000,000 ongoing auctions at eBay, and took the 3% of fraud auctions = 90,000 auctions. I would imagine atleast an average of $100 per auction completion. That puts it at $9,000,000 at any one time and that's only from eBay. This also doesn't acocunt for auctions that were performed outside of eBay as the P-P-P-powerbook one was so performed. Also, imagine the thousands of other financial banks and credit card companies doing business online. And let's not even get started on Paypal.
*Notice.. this was a totally unscientific experient performed by myself.
I think that when putting these numbers all together would make a strong case for such two-factor authentication. I don't mind a second step if it's going to save me money if someone really wants into my banks, eBay acocunts, etc...
Hmmm.
I bank online and when I set up my account I was told to choose a password I would remember. What comes to mind ... but the good old fashioned "password" . Of course, I wanted to tell that Banking Rep that's exactly what you DON'T want to do. Mine is a 9+ digit alpha-numeric combination that is not so easy to remember. Is that enough /.ers?
I know it's cliche, but I still get stuck in line behind people who don't understand the basics of the ATM machine interface. Inserting (or swiping) the card throws them off. Grocery store POS systems, never consistent between chains, present even more hurdles. I've seen "Pay at the Pump" customers drive off because they just don't understand the instructions.
You want to give these folks RSA dongles? They don't even see the security implications of putting their entire credit line on their keychain with not even a PIN for validation.
The two problems are simple: People here won't understand it, and they won't care.
Why this works in Europe is beyond me, but I'm sure there are plenty of cliche anti-American rants to help explain it.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
To log in you need to enter:
- A 12 chacacter alphanumeric code as your username (given to you on a card when you sign up)
- Your date of birth
- Three digits from your security number, and it's different digits on each subsequent visit. For example on one visit you'll be asked for the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd digit. The next visit you might be asked for the 4th, 6th & last.
I have a lot of respect for the HSBC. Their customer service is also second to none - with my US bank I frequently find myself getting passed around between different customer service reps and having to tell my story from the beginning each time. Not so with the HSBC, they know my name before I've even spoken, and they never lose track of me no matter how many people I get passed along to.Drill baby drill - on Mars
There really isn't a lot of damage that someone could do with my online banking account.
I can't transfer funds to an account that is not mine.
The information that is available online about me and my account is less than what is available on a check. I guess I should be more concerned about that, but I have no control of my checks once I have used them to pay for something.
My Debit card information is not available online.
About the best someone can do with my account is see my balance.
A scratch-off password list is a password scheme.
a One-time pad is an encryption algorithm.
The two have basically nothing to do with each other.
A one time pad:
Generate a random pattern of bits of the same length as the plaintext. XOR the two. The resulting ciphertext and the random field are now both requried to re-generate the plaintext (to call one the ciphertext and one the key is wrong too. they are both statistically equivalent).
Both are also completely useless by themselves, and truly totally, provably, unbreakable.
This is the only form of unbreakable encryption.
The moment you use a pad more than once, though, it ceases to be a one-time pad, and is breakable.
...you have enough to worry about without even considering online banking...
I have lived most of my life in Scandinavia and used online banking with one-time passwords since 1994, but I moved to the States about a year ago. Honestly, I was scared when I learned that my local bank uses a permanent username-password combination for online access - transfers, loan applications and everything! One-time passwords shouldn't be too difficult, since even the smallest Scandinavian banks have been using them for years.
The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.
-Bertolt Brecht
A few months ago, most (AFAIK, all) portuguese banks updated their online banking auth systems.
... and so on.
There's no standard, and they seem to be having some dificulty balancing user-friendliness with security.
The current "hip" thing is to require a login/password pair, followed by things like:
- Enter the the sixth and second numbers of your ID card/passport (random positions)
- Enter your numeric PIN using the randomly placed JavaScript keypad
- Use the code-matrix card (provided by the bank) and enter the value in square 4C
- Confirm every money-moving operation with digits in random positions from a fixed (long) code given to you by the bank. Said code is regenerated every month.
I don't thinks there's any bank here using plain login/password auth. There were attempts to use personal x509 certs, but most users had trouble installing them or using them.
The solution to all your problems is just a pentobarbital prescription away.
For a normal consumer security isn't really an issue. While identity theft is a real concern, and a hassle if it happens to you, your banks policies regarding reimbursement if your money should be stolen are far more important. Banking at an FDIC insured company, and asking them how fast they can reinstate an account's balance in case of fraud is much more important in the end. The best security can be broken, but a good safety net is hard to beat! -Ian
When the costs of fraudulent use of accounts exceeds the cost of implementing more secure access methods, the banks will then implement more secure methods.
Besides, what can you do from most US online bank systems? Check balances, transfer funds from one type of account to anther (savings to checking), or maybe even transfer to another member of the same bank? These are all very traceable and means that really stupid criminals will get caught.
It's probably much easier to just steal credit card numbers.
In Holland we have several systems (depending on the bank). The postbank, which I use for private banking) has just introduced a system in which a unique TAN (6 digit) is SMS-ed to a predefined number whenever you want to issue transactions. Of course one has to enter a username/password when accessing the banking-site. These can be self-chosen. For my company I use the RABO-bank which uses a calculator in which you first have to enter a pin and then one has to enter the temporary 8-digit code which appears in the calculator.
...why are we still using a system that relies on you trusting every single person you give your credit card details to? It would be perfectly possible to generate a one-time authorisation code for each transaction...
Living in Denmark I am a customer of 'Danske Bank' (Danish Bank) who recently deployed an optional ActivCard password generator.
;)
Usage is easy: punch in a selfdefined 4 digit PIN-code and the calculator-thingie returns an 8 digit password code. What's more: when doing transactions one will be presented with a 6 digit code that one has to punch into the ActivCard, which then returns a 6 digit confirmation-code that one has to key in in order for the transaction to take place.
It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. There's very little hassle involved. Furhter: I can log in from any computer that has internet access. No files are involved. And with codes changing every half minute or so (i believe) security seems to be top notch. Plus there's a definite geek-factor in using the card: generating passwords, keying in confirmation codes etc.
naah sig schmig
My bank uses SSN, a PIN and a password and a three try lock-out. I feel just slightly better about this, as the SSN and a PIN only is a useless security. Having a PIN and a password (which can be alpha-numeric) is better - especially with the three try lock-out.
This is the only bank I use on-line.
I worry about other on-line accounts that I might have in 'quasi-ready-to-go' state, at my other financial institutions. These are the ones where I haven't setup a formal on-line relationship, but the bank assumes I want to, so they have the account in a 'pending' setup status.
Does anyone know if there is legislation/banking guidelines that protect me if I DON'T setup the on-line account, but some cracker does?
One example of crap security was my old cell phone account, which setup on-line instantly by sending my new 'PIN' security code to the phone. Had I lost the phone, the thief could have setup the on-line account, by using the phone's show own number feature and then getting PIN. VIOLA! On-line access. Obviously I would have reported the phone lost/stolen, but if he did this quickly enough he could have change my birthdate, etc (and gotten access to personal info) so I couldn't prove I was me.
USA Corporations are scum, and that's the way it is.
A "one-time password" means a password that is used once and discarded. This password is typically used only for authentication purposes. By contrast, a "one-time pad" is used for encryption purposes.
One-time pads are almost never useful for typical internet situations because they are very easy to misuse and very insecure when misused. They also don't solve any problem worth solving -- conventional encryption is already strong enough that the added security of a one-time pad has no value in typical internet situations.
One-time passwords, on the other hand, do potentially have some value, because the currently available password authentication systems are quite weak compared to the strength of the corresponding encryption systems.
"are others also worried about poor security of online banking in the U.S.?" No, in the US, the legistlators are only worried how to preserve the "Can-Spam Act", "Patriot Act" etc... Companies are fine with that as long as the legistlator do not push for it. I do not expect to see any improvement in security as long as privacy is low on every body's list.
I always wondered why the security was soooo poor: while it has changed slightly now (better usernames/passwords) it used to be the case that your username was your SSN and your password a number code (!). I am sure most of you will agree with me that this is scary...The nicer ones even give you credit-card-size RSA password generator which is combined with a calculator you can keep in your pocket. Hence my question: are others also worried about poor security of online banking in the U.S.? Are there banks which are better than the ones mentioned above?"
Seriously, what is up with your punctuation? We have a colon where there should be a period, an exclamation mark (in parentheses) followed by a period, an ellipse that touches the first word in the next sentence, and conclude with a quotation mark that doesn't have a partner. You also seem unable to decide on one space or two between sentences.
I try not to be a grammar nazi because I know that I often get it wrong in my own writing, but this was so tremendously obvious and distracting I couldn't read the article.
-Colin
There's a virtual (online only) bank here in Poland that has used one-time pads for the last couple of years.
My current bank uses a secure token to protect online access.
Bill Gates announced today that he is broke. He said he had plenty of money a week ago, but it is apparently all gone now.
Unknown host pong.
Stronger security should only be provided if the cost of implementing that security (money, time, convenience) is less than the costs of not implementing it.
From my perspective, if someone breaks into my account, it's a hassle, but not a huge deal: My account is insured, and I get my money back. I'd rather deal with the inconvenince of this happening once or twice in my lifetime than having to deal with carrying and using a password generator for my entire life.
From the bank's perspective, it is probably cheaper to lose some money to accounts being compramised than to implement better security across the board. That translates to lower costs (or better interest) for me the customer, which is also nice. I'm fairly confident this is true, because were it better (cheaper, more convenient) to have stronger security, my commercial bank (always wanting to make a buck) would be doing that instead.
Your house would be more secure if you had bullet-resistent windows, steel-reinforced cross-bar doors, one-time pad electronic access, and 24/7 security guards, but most people the find much "weaker" deadbolt/key combination to be the BETTER solution.
paintball
Even after what they did to Kevin Flannagan?
I don't trust banks that fire their programmers to hire people working offshore for $2.50/hr- there's just WAY too much potential for abuse there. After all, why would your bank card data be secure, when any one of their offshore programmers can get away with many hundreds of years worth of salary by selling your identity on the black market?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I work for a security firm who do vulnerabilty testing for banks in Australia and New Zealand. Several of the ideas that banks here have implemented / are working on include:
1. Sending a one time passcode to the users mobile phone via SMS text message when they login in. The user then enters this code to continue. So the user needs username, password and the correct cell phone to use online banking.
2. Requesting the user enter selected numbers from the there ATM card. So the user needs ATM card, username and password to access.
Neither are perfect by any means (cellphones and ATM cards are easily stolen / there are only a limited amount of numbers on an ATM card / not all customers have mobile phones / who pays for the text message etc).
However they add a signifcant amount of complexity over a simple username and password, without the expense of going to one time RSA style pads.
IMO TAN numbers should only protect transactions from your account to another one, not checking balances or transfers between private accounts. E.g. any operation on your account which can be used for 'evil' should be protected. It's simply a pain in the ass otherwise and people will get sloppy protecting those TAN numbers.
If people wanted to pay the additional costs for more secure banking, people would pay them.
The fact that nobody is paying for more security in the free market is a pretty good indication that people don't really want it in the first place.
paintball
This is nothing new really (and they're actually not one-time pads, they're one-time passwords), I remember using these one-time passwords while telnettting (!) to my Finnish bank in the early 90's. Back then I'd receive a slip of paper with the password numbers printed on it from my bank (they'd send a new ones automatically when I had used up all of them).. Today I have a Digipass which generates one-time passwords for login. I also have to sign every transaction with it.
Oh, and I'm not using telnet anymore (but I wish someone would give me ssh access to a terminal app!)
I've had Internet access to my bank for quite a few years now. I've got a small device that looks like a calculator, when I start it I have to type a 4 digit PIN. To access my bank I go to their website where I get an 8 digit number which I type into my device, it gives an 8 digit number back which I type into the login box in my browser.
If all went well then I'm logged in. It's a smooth operation and it works well for all computers with a browser (I use Galeon). Since the device is small I can take it with me when I go out of town.
While technically not a bank, my investment services (Wacho-whatchamacallit) has a relatively secure registration process.
You have to go to the website to register where you pick your username and password (which is checked for length, needs at least 1 special character and at least 2 numbers), enter your account number, blah blah blah. Then, the bank overnights you your license agreement, etc. with another passcode (I think mine was something like 12 digits, alphanumeric).
While not foolproof, and slightly inconvenient, this was possible the best registration process I've come across.
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
In Sweden, there are several system in use. The arguably largest bank, Nordea, uses a combination of printed one-time-pads and personal codes.
Does everything include nothing?
if they want to steal my balance of $13. Canadian dollars that is.
What is the security impication of putting my entire credit line on my keychain? I've already got my entire credit line in my wallet....
paintball
Rubber hose cryptanalysis always works. Note that hese one time code systems often require a login and/or password, so you wouldn't want to knock Mary up. Better to tie her up and beat her with a rubber hose until she gives you the information. Of course, the same would work with your login/password system. I wonder how long you would last under excruciating torture.
What happens when you forget one of the two required pieces. Now that one of these devices is a physical object it's much easier to have left it behind. you are then el-screwd-oh. Sure you can forget your PIN, but that's less likely IMO then forgetting a physical object...
What about employing retinal scan devices. They can be produced cheaply. My credit card company provides me with a credit card with smart chip and they provided me (free) the smart card reader. They also can provide one-time usage credit card numbers. So if I wish to make a purchase I can get this number, plug it in - it works and is then disabeled... Now another bank that i use SS# and 4 digit pin - freaky --- luckily i do not have much money there and online bill payment is disabeled.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
For example, I dredge up the number 42 (the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything) and some nonsense word. Let's say it's "snert". Pump it through the construction process and I come up with "first47snertt". Not exactly intuitive, but I'm just adding the number of letters in "first" (5) to my number and the last letter ("t") to the end of the nonsense word.
The result is a pretty strong password. No cracking program is going to have the word in it's dictionary and knowing my password to First National isn't going to tell you that my password to Discover is "discover50snertr". Since "snert" is nonsense anyway, there's no way to tell where the letters come from; you could be sticking the third letter in "Discover" onto the beginning and your nonsense word could be "nertr". There are no rules to how to construct the password, but you want to have an obscure way for the base password to modify the gibberish in the rest so knowing one password will not give you the rest. It saves me the trouble of remembering a lot of strong passwords. Of course, if someone got ahold of several of my passwords and spent enough time on them, they could probably figure out the routine, but that's not as dangerous as using the same password.
And yes, that's just an example. It's not the process I use to construct my own passwords. Trust me, you don't want to know.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Just plain sucks when it comes to security. Got to http://www.bankofamerica.com. Notice that its http and not https. Also, now go to https://www.bankofamerica.com, and notice that it kindly redirects you back to the insecure link.
I use this bank, and I always put in my wrong userid and passwd so that I can enter them on a secure page. If someone is interested in thousands of bank accounts go ahead and register www.bankfoamerica.com or something similar, and mass mail people to make sure their account is correct or whatever. People will follow the link. You can simply grab their info and redirect them to the proper server with little hastle from anyone.
I've called and told them about this, and they told me that "We are a bank, we take security very seriously, thank you very much". This was when I called them to find out the real balance of my credit card. I had 2 balances with $1,200 difference between them. They told me it was a cache problem in my browser, even thought I used 3 different browsers, under 2 different usernames on my system. They didn't seem to understand that a) https data is not cached between browsers, nor b) https data is not cached between different users. Oh yeah, this is also after they started talking to me about my last purchases on my cc without confirming _any_ form of identification besides my cc number.
I feel as though I have an OK workaround by putting in the wrong info the 1st time, but if anyone else uses Bank Of America, I would suggest a call to them.
It was fine when I submitted it to the Slashdot editors.
paintball
In the original poster's defence, I don't actually see him using the term "one time pad" anywhere other than the headline, which may have been put in by the Slashdot staff. In any case, the term is almost certainly being misused here.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
When I first signed up for an account at Wells Fargo, I was shocked that they used my Social Security Number as a user ID (with no way to change it) and only accepted numeric passwords. (I think it may have initially only allowed 4 digit passwords, akin to the ATM PIN, but they lengthened it later).
So, I sent them an e-mail explining the issue, and asking to be allowed a longer password with letters, numbers, and symbols.
I got back a form letter assuring me that my security was their highest priority, and I have nothing to worry about. I tried calling and talking to a human to explain the problem, but didn't get much further.
I checked back last year some time, and they had changed it to allow real username/passwords ( 4-5 years after I initially saw the problem ).
But, they made no effort to contact customers and suggest they change their accounts. It was just there for those that looked into their account settings. I'm sure you'll still find a high percentage of users that have their SSN as user-id and their four digit ATM PIN as their password.
this is an simple example of a one time pad and how powerful/simple they are consider the following string 10101010110101011 say you XOR it with a one time pad and get: 00000010101001010 the cracker/cryptologist will only have the last string and noting else. Without the one time pad, there is no way to accurately determine what that string is. It is IMPOSSIBLE to break if you have no way of testing the deciphered output to make sure it is right
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Now I just have to worry about someone with a SSN equal to my random number opening an account...
There's no real motivation for US customers to demand more security - our liability is effectively 0 if you don't consider aggravation. Banks run commercials about how they're protecting your money against theft but it's about as meaningful as spray cans which insist they are CFC free(as they have been legally required to be since the middle 70s) Yeah, the bank looks out for theft - because it's THEIR money lost if they don't!
If your account is raided you file a claim - which is often no more difficult than making a phone call - and you get it back. Yes, we all pay for this cost eventually in increased costs but you can look to the health insurance market to see how much attention and concern people pay to costs that -eventually- trickle down vs immediately.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
The way American banks make sure that your money is secure is to make the sure the online bank UI is too horrible to really be able to pull off a theft, or really make any use of the money at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ever since a popular Dutch bank started allowing electronic access (initially through dial-up using a modem) some years ago, they have required a user-code, and two passcodes (one picked by the bank, one by the user) to log in.
Additionally, if you want to transfer any money, you have to input a number from a list they send you through the mail. This list is printed while it's in the envelope (like some US banks do for overdraft statements and such) so no people other than the recipient ever see it. When you get close to using the last number, they send you a new list automatically.
Since they moved the whole system to the Internet, things are pretty much the same. You can log in and check your balance wherever you are, but you can only transfer money if you have your transfer-code-list with you. To me, this feels like the perfect system; in-your-way security restrictions only on the stuff that really matters.
European banks give the option to use secure hardware devices. If the customer selects one, he will bear the cost of the device costing about 20 .
Most user ids are issued by the banks, unless you steal the user id, you will not be able to guess it. I have seen numeric accounts of 6-7 digits though. Easy to guess.
Passwords are mostly numbers giving you e.g. 10000 possible combinations.
ActiveCard / Digipass will give you a challenge result of about 1000000 possible combinations. Some even use more digits.
Payments of up to 1000 EUR can be made without a second sign, above it will require a second signature. This means that 0,001 EUR can be transferred, not worth the effort to try to break in the system.
Some banks make use of Cezam terminals that use the bank-cards introduced into a device. For cracking these, you need 1, the pin code, 2 the chip on the bank-card, 3 the correct hardware in order to crack.
Biometrics are known to be too error-prone so the security is weakened in such a way that they should be combined with other security means to offer a complete solution.
But is the one-time pad (plus fixed password) used by ZKB really any less secure than the UBS calculator? The one-time pad sheet is easier to carry around than the calculator.
By the way, the bank you call 'crappy' (ZKB) pays twice as much interest on current accounts as the bank (UBS) you call 'nice'. (Neither pay much, but we're talking about accounts in Swiss francs, which is probably the world's hardest currency over long periods.) (There are other differences - the UBS web site is available in English, French and Italian as well as German, while the ZKB site is German-only.)
Personally I would not call any Swiss bank 'crappy', because then you need another word to describe American banks.And Windows 2003 complained that @bob&bob$ *! was too simple a password because it didn't contain a number.
Fellowship 9/11
HBCI yet. HBCI is an open standard that's widely deployed throughout Europe (at least as far as I can tell). It incorporates encryption through OpenSSL and its source code is readily available on Sourceforge.
i bank with hsbc in the uk for both my personal accounts and business accounts.
for my personal account, to use internet banking, i go to their website (secure by ssl) and enter an eleven digit unique id. this then takes me to another page which asks my dob and three random digits from my security number. once in, i can do whatever i want. not bad methinks.
my business account though is considerably more secure. to set up the online banking i had a forty digit unique alphanumeric id, sent to me in the post, a password that i decided at the bank and several security questions to answer. this let me then set up a new username and password and download my own unique security certificate.
now, anytime i want to log into my business account online, my browser has to have the certificate in its store (i could carry it around on a usb keychain i guess and import it anywhere i go) and use my username and password.
all in all, quite secure. nothings perfect, but i'm not too worried about somebody getting to my accounts.
But with Natwest bank I have a 4 digit pin number and a password, when I log in it asks me for 3 random digits from each
eg.
Please enter the 2nd, 4th and 1st digits of your pin [ ] [ ] [ ]
Please enter the 6th 8th and 2nd letters of your password [ ] [ ] [ ]
While this isn't as secure has using 1 time passwords it prevents people from finding your password with just a keylogger (you'd have to be able to carefully monitor the users screen and keypresses over a long period of time to find out the password), and its a shame more login systems don't do that as I always feel a bit funny typing full passwords into obviously spyware infested internet cafe computers.
You must be kidding.
In the US, bank personnel still think that your mother's maiden name and your SSN are the height of security (both fixed items with the two worst properties for passwords -- known by many people and unchangeable).
What we need is an olfactory based password. You scratch and SNIFF it, then type a number based on the smell. 1 is grape, 2 is orange. In Amsterdam, there are other possibilities.
Of course, in France, this scheme breaks down...
Ah yes, here come the flamebait mods...
I myself get my student loan from Denmark but am a student in Norway, this means I have two Skandiabanken accounts - one in Denmark, one in Norway. This semester I am doing some research in the US and suddenly the Norwegian Skandiabanken decided to get that new one-time password thing. Therefore I am now stuck here without knowing how much money is left in my account nor what my Norwegian account number is so that I could push money over there from Denmark. What a great idea!
I have friends who work on online banking systems for one of the larger national US banks.
These things get broken into all the time. It isn't even password policy or authentication methods that are the vulnerability. It's that you're hodgepodging a webapp together to integrate into a legacy system. The networking that is set up to integrate the two sides is designed in committee by upper management sharks using whichever vendor most successfully schmoozed the alpha management shark.
Instead of designing the online banking functionality to be secure, they get mired in politics, feature creep, kruft and a rush to get to market. This results in a very complex and compromised implementation which is very easy to exploit.
And that's where we're stuck. In order to fix a particular banks online system you're going to have to rebuild it from scratch at great expense. I'm afraid the banks would rather eat the cost of constant theft than cut the decision committees and lay out the dough to do it right.
So that's why I suspect that we don't see nifty authentication gadgets for online banking here. It'd be like putting a padlock on a screen door. Pointless.
The system seems pretty safe to me: the PIN is never entered into the computer, and the chipcard is very hard to duplicate. The only problem I see is that transactions are not checksummed with the challenge/response, so you are not 100% sure that the transactions that you give permission for are the same as those received by the bank.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
I hate to be a pain in the ass about semantics, but the article headline is a bit misleading. It states One-Time Pads To Protect Electronic Bank Access. The article is about one-time passwords. I'm no crypto expert, but I've done my fair share of reading. A one-time pad is the closest thing available to perfect, unbreakable encryption. The idea is that two pads are generated of completely randomly generated characters, one is used to encrypt the characters (via modulo divide/add/xor, whatever) and immediately destroyed. The other is used to decrypt the message. As long as the pads contain truly random numbers, and they are never reused or recovered, the encryption will never be broken (because the cyphertext is a completely random string of characters).
A one-time password, while usually a pretty good key, is just not the same -- especially if we're talking a 64-bit key with a known encryption scheme. It can be very good, but never even close to the former.
Anyway, like I said earlier I'm not a cryptographer, but a enthusiast (at one time)...but I found that the header in the article was misleading.
-Turkey
Oh come on. Are you seriously comparing the world famous SWISS banks, known for their secrecy and security with the US ones? Just because of the tax enforcement laws alone, US banks are insecure compared to the Swiss ones.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
I finally got them to use a phrase using l33tspeek for a password: (IE l33tm0m)
Still not as good as your technique, but easy enough for them to remember and not as bad as what they were using.
Mom: (entering password) click, click
Me: "That's an awfully short password mom, what're you using?"
Mom: "My birthdate: 1217"
Me: "AAAUUUGGGHHH!"
Mom: "What's wrong with that? I don't give it out."
(Note: Birthdate changed to protect the innocent.)
My sister-in-law is an accountant, and we bank at the same small credit union. So one day I snnek a peek at my brother's check book an go get on-line that night. I move one dollar from my account into his, all you need is his number that is all. I figured it would throw her off for a month and that would be that. As it worked out though the deposit happened - it failed to record on her accounts. This drove her stark raving mad for about 3 months being off by a dollar. She finally went in and I guess they hand went through her deposits and what not. When confronted about it I made the defense of "But, I owed my brother a buck - he didn't think I would pay up, but I did, sorry forgot to tell you." My brother had to physically restrain her
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
This reminds me about the theory of why carjacking became so popular. The engineers figured out better alarm systems,locking mechanisms and other anti-theft deterrents ("The Club"? ), but thieves just side stepped the issue by stealing your car as you unlocked it. This led to more bodily harm, not less. Not very good engineering in some respects...
The name "one time pad" comes from when you had a little pad with numbers on. The sender and the reciever had one each and the pages discarded on the sending side was also discarded on the recieving side. You typically didn't use xor but modulo in the actual algorithm. I'm talking WWII technology here, so binary wasn't a common concept.
The very last line of the article refers to deadbolts on a house saying that the more stuff you have the more secure you will, of necessity, make your house.
Applying this in reverse, I have found that diversification is much more secure. The passwords to the smallest accounts, needing the least security, are fairly short and easy to remember. The passwords to the largest accounts are much more secured, with seemingly random character combinations that I change regularly. I say seemingly completely random because I use tricks like deciding that this account will have a password this month generated from the nineteenth character on pages 71-79 of the fourth book on the second shelf of the bookcase in my room. The trick is to use rules that, if not divulged, would not be intuitive to anyone else, but make it relatively easy for me to "look up".
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
You can pay _anyone_, put in name, address, amount and *bam*, a check is on its way. Not to mention that a lot of banks now have a pay-a-friend transfer option to almost any account or even anyone with an email address.
Since it will all be running under windows. If the computer is rooted the entire session can be hijacked, and all the authentication (challenge-response calculator, and crypted biometrics and all) can be used for any given transaction the person who really owns the box wants.
...
If someone used one of the last two worms discovered to say hijack online banking sessions for a couple of banks and randomly transfer money shit would have hit the fan
Online banking sucks. We need external devices which can show you the transactions before you authenticate them. Windows is simply too insecure to rely upon. Same problem as online voting, you need to treat the computer as a completely unreliable and insecure device. Otherwise the potential harm a worm can cause is unacceptable.
We wont be lucky forever.
You wouldn't want to knock her up because then you might later have to pay her 936 child support payments, which most likely will add up to far more than you could ever get from her account in the first place.
My bank, chesbank.com, has a nice interface and is very useful however the security has a few flaws in my opinion. They do clain that you need a browser supporting 128bit SSL and even though they say you need internet explorer it works just fine in Mozilla. I like the fact that I get to choose my logon name, and can change it whenever I want. The password must be changed every 3 months which is a good policy but I think it should be shorter. I do not like the fact that the password *MUST* be 6 characters long. I have a good secure password which is easy to remember, including 2 numbers, 2 lower, and 2 capital letters, but I cannot use it on this system. Why in the world they decided all passwords must be 6 characters is beyond me. If I ever forget my password I need to send email to their support address and within a few hours it is reset to the last 4 digits of my social security number. No doubt there are better ways to do this.
Has anyone else had experiences like this?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I used to think biometrics were the ultimate form of authentication. Then I worked at a company which used fingerprint scans as a clock in / clock out device. After a few good years of use, the thing couldn't tell a fingerprint from a warm hot dog. I actually tried that once, it validated me. It would also validate on the back of the hand, the elbows, and a few other body parts that involved seriously cleaning the pad afterwards.
While the idea may be great, I've yet to be convinced of either the strength of implementation or the wisdom of making everyone in a company share germs immediately before lunch.
The ______ Agenda
Carying anything on your person that might identify where you bank is a much greater threat to your health and wealth in any situation. In some places it would not even be safe to keep information like that at home.
I have accounts with two banks in India - HSBC and ICICI Bank
HSBC does not even let me keep special characters in the password - it has to be from A-Za-z0-9. Once logged in, I can make inter-account transfers without having a second password.
On the other hand, ICICI Bank requires me to have a second password to make transactions. Not that it is any safer - for example, check this article.
is not one time pad, unless those "passwords" are totally random string of bits, as long as the cleartext itself.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Actually,
:)
If you use the swedish bank "Sparbanken" (one of the largest) you got your own RSA half-creditcard sized code generator. You enter your social security id (birthdate with 4 unique digits attached) to the bank to give the basic identification and the bank gives back a 9 digit code you enter into your RSA code generator (after entering a 4 digit access PIN code) and then get another 9 digit code that you enter into the browser to the bank.
It might sound like a lot of work, but it really goes in less than 30 seconds in most cases. Plus, you do the same procedure (get code enter code in rsa device, enter in browser to bank) everytime you want to pay a bill. Although you can stack up 20-30 payments or more and sign them just once, so it's not a procedure that really bothers anyone.
And of course all the communication is over https/ssl and all.
Just to give some more details on how it works
DB requires you to use one of these (they are called TANs) when you want to do something that affects the balance of the account, like transfer/withdraw money. However, to simply login you do not need to use one.
This discussion has centered around the technical merits of one-time pads, tokens and such, which is all perfectly understandable given this is /. after all. However, let us not overlook the real reason why banks are increasingly coming under pressure shell out money to upgrade their security, and possibly make life more complicated for their customers - its the customers themselves.
As they stand, online banking systems are pretty secure, and once you are on their https sites then the actual risk of passwords being stolen in a man in the middle attack is pretty small.
Phishers, as we now call bank robbers, have become highly adept at convincing bank customers to *tell them* their secret passwords, etc., after which they can pretty much do what they want until the customer/bank cotton on. The real value of one-time systems is that they make it very difficult for a customer to give away the keys to the safe that their bank has worked so hard to build. This is really about countering social engineering, not fixing a technical hole.
wouldn't want people to know you had all that nazi gold!
a zi s/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/n
Banks in the US don't need as much security as those in Europe, Australia, the Orient etc.. because here in the US, you cannot transfer funds to another person. The most you can do is pay bills (which are reversable) and transfer funds within your own accounts.
Yep, I'm a programmer for one of them.
First of all, your login to our on-line banking system is a randomly generated unique 8 digit number. It's on your ATM card and it's your user ID number for the bank. You also have to remember your 6 digit PIN. But what if you forget your PIN? Well we can't give it to you. Why, because we use one half of a public private key encryption to save only the encrypted version of your PIN. And just to be safe we throw away the private key so even WE can't see what your PIN is. If we ever get hacked (and people try but they've never gotten through. And yes, we've caught them and put them in jail) in any case, if we ever do get hacked they can only see the encrypted version of your PIN and the private key to decrypt them is nowhere to be found.
So you forget your PIN. How do you get a new one? You call us and verify who you are via at least 2 or 3 different ways (I won't tell you how). Then we mail you (yes, snail mail) a new temp PIN to the address your checking account goes to. You can log in ONCE with that temp pin and you are required to change your password after the first login. By the way, if you log in 3 times incorrectly then we lock your account and notify people in the bank that this may be a hack attempt. Good thing we also log the IP address each of those login attempts were coming from.
By the way, when you first signed up you gave us a secret question like "When dad bought that farm in Kentucky he also bought some cattle. What was the name of the first cow that he bought?" You wrote the question yourself which makes it even harder for a hacker to guess what that question is. And when you applied for on-line access you gave us the answer "Matilda". That answer is also encrypted with a one way public-but-no-private-key on our servers. So when you log in with your temp password we're going to ask you the question that only you know the answer to.
I havn't even gotten to physical security. Believe me, don't even try to physically get to our servers, or even to the printers that print your statements. That is, if you could even find the buildings (There are no signs on teh building that say who we are) Add to that triple redundent servers and databases that are located in physically different locations over 200 miles apart so even a terrorist attack on one city won't destroy your bank records. AND those records are backed up and stored in yet another physical location.
And I could talk about all the auditing that the SEC does on us to make sure that our systems are secure, our data is redundently backed up, failover systems work and so on.
So yes, most banks have far more security than you can imagine. You may feel safe again.
For a one time pad system to work the two communicating parties must
_ ________
actually exchange key information, the keys have to be as large as the
amount of data intended on being transferred between the two parties,
no sequence of key can be used again, once a key sequence has been used
for encrypting decrypting it has to be thrown in a bit bucket.
So how does a bank issue an OTP based password to its customers? Do they
do it every time they visit the bank? isn't the whole idea of online banking
not only to bring about some level of convince for the customer but to
also reduce the bank's overheads by having less branches etc?
I think what you call OTP is really just PKI.
Arash Partow
_________________________________________
http://www.partow.net
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
From my perspective, if someone breaks into my account, it's a hassle, but not a huge deal: My account is insured, and I get my money back. I'd rather deal with the inconvenince of this happening once or twice in my lifetime than having to deal with carrying and using a password generator for my entire life.
It's happened to me, because the bank picked an obvious initial password on my account and assigned guessable numbers for the debit card. Thieves took out money up to my credit line before I even got the sign-up info and password in the mail.
If you think that that is not a "big deal", think again. The bank's first response was: "it's your fault, you didn't protect your password, so we aren't responsible". It took a year to fix it. I had to dispute every single charge in writing, one letter at a time. I couldn't close the account until all the disputes were resolved, and I had to dispute the charges that followed from having the account open and from the overdrafts separately. I was lucky it didn't wreck my credit rating, but it has become much more of a hassle for me to get a new credit card now. This sort of thing is not a minor inconvenience, it's a major problem, and it can become a devastating problem. You don't want this to happen to you, even if you don't have any money in your account.
One-time passwords are trivial and cheap to implement. Banks at least should give their customers the choice.
TCF still requires you to use your SSN for a username. This is why I have moved to another bank. Not to mention that when I was in college, they would cash checks received on same day in the order that would get them the most profit from overdraft fees. Bastards.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
For example, a well-played phishing ("click here to protect your bank acount from hackers", says the email...) scam can circumvent just about any challenge-response based authentication scheme with a MITM attack.
No matter how complicated the procedure (even the ones with transaction numbers), the bad guy's best bet is to get the unwary user to surrender the passcodes himself.
Furthermore, banks and other institutions are often much less secure internally than they seem from their interface. You'd be amazed at how insecure and unreliable on the inside some of the more well-known and trusted organizations are, even though the present a 128-bit RSA-encrypted facade to the customer.
Banks regularly write off millions in losses due to theft through some unknown or unsecured channel. In order for enhanced security to be an option, it has to cost less than the losses it eliminates. The observant cracker takes advantage of this fact and strikes carefully.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
same as my luggage infact!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Two areas where the USA is just out in left field, cellular services and banking. The first one has stopped suprising me, the second one blew me away. I consider my country (Poland) to be backwards, especially when it comes to commercial services - like banking. It's not.
Not only does my bank use one time passwords, the card they're on is a scratch-off card. This gives me 2 additional levels of protection. Not only does it prevent someone from peeking at my card, but it let's me verify that I made each transaction. I don't need to keep track of the last number I used, it keeps track for me. And I don't need the card unless I'm actually moving money around - all I need is my login and password.
The web interface on my bank is incredible - I can check on all transactions since I opened the account.I can set up sub-accts on the fly, issue debit cards to each of them, and my debit card works great online - so I can keep track of those internet purchases. Between-bank money transfers take a max of 1 day, usually same-day if I make it before 17.30, transfers within my bank are instantaneous - really handy for lending my brother some money *fast*.
And the icing on the cake, the thing that made me go to this bank - instant text-message updates on my current account. I get a transfer - I get an SMS, I buy something - I get an SMS. It's incredibly fast (I usually get the SMS before they hand me the reciept to sign) and incredibly useful. I know how much money I have, how much money I spent that day. It really helps to stem the spending sprees that plastic seems to lend itself to.
And all this, from my local, Polish bank.
I live in Canada, but I also use services of a bank in Poland, via Internet, of course. They use similar system as described in the original article - for example, if I want to transfer money to a different account, I have to use one-time password, which I get from a printed form mailed to me by the bank. To get these, I had to call the bank and order them first. When they arrived, I had to call again to activate.
:-)
:-) The bank I use has one password for everything, just login and do whatever you want. I have to say, I prefer this more relaxed attitude. I do not enjoy being treated as a potential thief :-)
Every time I call the bank, they ask me tons of questions to verify my identity before they can proceed. In some cases, they ask me to disconnect, and wait until they call back my home phone number
- to make sure that that's really me
And do not even ask how difficult it was to open an account in Polish bank remotely, without physically visiting the branch - it took about four months.
Compared to this, Canadian banks are like from another planet
That is only if the key is random and as long as the message and used only once via XPOR. One-time passwords are something entirely different end infinitely more insecure, given that one-time pads are the most secure possible encryption method.
Somebody (the createo od the title) is obviously shaky on crypto.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yeah, but security is no match for stupidity. How much you want to bet people will write their passwords on the back of the card for safe keeping. I still see people with their passwords on a 3X5 card in their desk drawer.
How about this for scary:
My Bank (which shall remain nameless) uses
your credit/debit card number for a login
and your pin number for the password.
I was floored when I first saw this. Its like they are asking to have their customers bank accounts cleaned out.
If your biometric is compromised (i.e. somebody gets your fingerprint and makes a copy of it on a special material that is read by fingerprint readers), it is impossible to change the biometric.
Also, your biometric is the same for all systems you use it in.
Biometrics add only medium level security to a system. But as they are hassle-free (if correctly implemented), they make a nice addition anyway.
NEVER USE BIOMETRICS ALONE, unless medium security is suffisant.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
Thanks for the link. :D
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
The banks in the US are so dumb that if you just have an account number you can withdrawl funds from someones checking account. Sad, unbelievable but true. I had someone withdrawing money from my bank of america account every month. The bank refused to identify who was withdrawing the money or to stop it from occuring in the future. I threatened them with a lawyer and they laughed.
So again, who needs a password in the US?
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
One of my former bosses was sent a couple of little boxes to generate numbers to access the business accounts over the web. I didn't really get it until reading this discussion...
If I speculate about the causes of the differences (from country to country) of bank security, I think about the following:
Basicly, the bank sends you a little black box.
Then, when you log in, the bank gives you a randomly generated 1-time number.
Said number is entered into the little black box and combined by said box (using a 1-way hash) with a secret number that is never sent over the wire.
Then, after that, you send the resulting hash back to the bank which compares it with its own hash of +
The advantage is that its not possible to capture any useable information by listening on the wire, you would need the (nondescript, easy to hide) little black box to be able to login. Plus the username and password for the banking site.
The other advantage is that it helps prevent bank scams because the scan site cant get hold of your secret number and therefore cant use anything they steal to log into the bank.
It's just a US thing. Banks in the USA are for some reason stuck in the 80's.
All the banks I use in Poland provide one-time passwords for anything important. There are no checks in use, but you can use electronic money transfers to pay for just about anything (this is being introduced as "BillPay" in the US and advertised as big news).
I guess the US was first to develop a mature banking industry with credit cards and checks. This has worked so well (back in the 70's) that banks were not under pressure to innovate.
As I understand it, most of these 'phishing' type things rely on getting someone to log into a web site which looks like their online banking system but isn't. I'd immagine they often get around the SSL problems by just not using SSL - most people won't read the url or notice the little padlock icon or whatever not being there.
Say someone has created such a site - what prevents them from harvesting one time passwords or even challenge/response data this way and using them for fraud immediately? Say the user tries to perform a transfer on the fake interface, provides their transaction number or challenge/response token - the fraudster just uses these details straight away on the real site. The keys they've stolen are fully valid as far as I can see - even the timed challenge/response, if they use it quickly enough. The user would eventually notice that their transaction never happened, but by then they've been robbed. Am I missing something?
Nationwide Building Society requires users to enter random characters from their passcode via drop downs. The combination of random characters and the drop downs is quite a good protection against key logging attacks.
HSBC's Corporate & Institutional Banking Service uses a 'virtual keyboard' to make keylogging attacks more difficult (though not impossible). Click the 'Register' link to see it in use in their registration process.
Of course, both these approaches make the assumption that users are prepared to undergo some extra 'pain' for the benefit of the additional security.
I have an account at Credit Suisse, one of the two big Swiss banks. The online banking was, up until recently done via a standalone Java client that was pretty nifty in terms of features etc. Now, because of the hassle of different Java versions, it's all done via a secure website, that, on log off, advises you to clear your cookies, delete your browsing history and close your browser. It works with an password, chosen by you, a number chosen by them, and a little credit card sized RSA key generator that generates one time keys.
You need to have all the info to access your account, one or two of them will not work, and three bad tries locks the account until you check in with them and get a new card.
It works very well.
I can't use many gas pumps because the poorly written software truncates my thirteen digit PIN number to four digits.
what gives? why are all my scratch-off passwords 00000000??
To use (secret key) encryption to communicate, the sender and receiver must both know the key at some point strictly before they want to send a message. The ciphertext is what must be sent to communicate a plaintext message that is unknown to both parties at the time the key is generated (otherwise, if it were known at that time, there would be no need for encryption, since the key must be communicated in secret anyway, the plaintext could be as well).
Perhaps you meant, "the entropy of the plaintext given the ciphertext is equal to the entropy of the plaintext given the key, which is equal to the unconditioned entropy of the plaintext".
It boggles my mind that we give our PIN's to these cheap mom & pop ATMs, so trustless that they'll dispense only up to $100. We should have onetime passwords for each transaction, ATM, charge, etc. I had an RV rental thief try to charge a $5K ripoff against my account, which only failed when I sensed his sleaze and thumbed my smartphone quickly enough to shut down the account I'd revealed to him. When I checked, and saw he had tried to charge from $5K down to $500 in $500 decrements, I reported him to my bank. They refused to pursue the matter, claiming that since he had failed to complete a transaction, he hadn't actually committed fraud or theft, so had committed no crime. Onetime passwords would protect from at least these "replay" attacks, much more secure when you can detect closure of the agreed transaction (at the agreed amount).
--
make install -not war
For credit cards at least. Consumer protection laws re very strong with credit cards. More or less, you write your bank a letter contesting a charge (some don't even require a letter), you don't pay it. Period. The company's only recourse is to sue you, if the charge is legit.
Happened to my folks. Someone got their CC# somehow and decided it would be fun to order $1000 of shit from Gamestop.com. Well that site is like #1 on B of A's fraud list. Combine that with the large amount and deviation from normal spending, caused the computer to throw a red flag and freeze the card. Bank called them, the confirmed the charges were not legit, charges canceled, card reported stolen, done.
I actually tend to trust online ordering more in many cases. Most good (large) sellers never even involve a human in CC verification. A computer gets your info, checks it against your bank, if it matches places the hold on your account, and sends information of what needs to go in a box and where the box goes to shipping. More efficient, cheaper, and more secure.
E-Bullion has a credit card sized CryptoCard available to protect one's gold backed ecurrency account. Another advantage to E-Bullion is opening an account is much easier than opening an account with most banks who want details like your cat's date of birth, etc.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
A one-time-pad is in no way the same as a one-time-password. The only thing common between the two is that they're both used only once.
A one-time-pad is a random string as long as the message you want to send, shared between sender and recipient. The sender encrypts the message by xoring with the one-time-pad and the recipient decrypts by doing xoring the ciphertext with his copy of the one-time-pad. The pads must then never be used again, and must be securely destructed to prevent people who have a copy of the ciphertext from getting hold of them. Unconditionally secure, but often impractical due to the key-handling issues.
A one-time-password, like those Banks here in Europe typically either issue to you on a sheet of 50, or in the form of a calculator-like device that generate them from the current time, a secret pin and a cryptographic hash serves a quite different purpose;
The idea is that if you force people to have long, complicated passwords, then they either write them down, use the same password on multiple sites, or both.
By using an additional one-time password, the bank makes sure that there's *two* things identifying the user logging in. One, the user knows the secret pin. (which is typically simple 4-digit or so.) and two, the user is in posession of the sheet-of-codes/calculator-thingie.
Increases security quite a bit, because it's no longer a threat if someone for example hacks the users computer and installs a keylogger or similar device. Sure that attacker will then learn the pin, but the attacker will then *also* need to break into the house of the victim or otherwise acquire the list of one-time-passwords. So at the very least you've eliminated the large group of attackers which have no physical proximity to the victim.
If it temporarily locked up, that's one thing, but, if it is permanently screwed, then the way to get back at someone is to borrow their card long enough to enter 4 random PINs, then put it back... You've locked them out of their account until they buy a new card!
When I was living there, what amazed me was the ability to take money out of an account with almost zero proof of who you are.
I withdrew $1700 from my account without being asked for ID or any passcode. All I needed was the bank book.
Although when I left the US, trying to get my money wired to me was a nightmare.
Anyway, point is US Banks are very behind other banks in the world when it comes to services/transactions.
About the fact that the entire US [thus World] economy is underpinned by $1 trillion [conservative estimate by i forget who] of the CIA's drug money every year.
War on drugs my arse....
I read a lot of one-time-password schemes here, but I didn't see many about challenge-response.
Here in the Netherlands, banks like ABN AMRO (which I am member of) give out generic calculators to everyone who has a internet account.
When you login, they request your account number and card number. and give you a challenge number.
You slide your bank card which has a chip on it in the calculator and press in your PIN. Then you type in the challenge number and you get the response back.
You type in the response on the website and you are authenticated.
When you commit transactions you sign them by responding to a challenge which is a hash from the transaction.
...I'll mention it. My bank, HSBC, gives you a small "card"(actually flimsy paper/plastic) with an identification number. This is of the form "AA1111111111". Then they have you put in your date of birth, something about me.
Depending on where they get the card, they may or may not be able to find out my DOB, the only thing on it is the number, no identifying marks.
The third key in this triple whammy is a 6-digit number. It asks for only three of these, each time you log in. And if you fail it, it asks for the same digits of the number.
Not the *most* secure, but good enough I reckon.
One Time Pad is a method of cryptography where you (roughly) XOR a block of data with a same size block of (ideally) random bits. This block should only be used once... hence the term One Time Pad.
On the other hand, One Time Password refers to the fact that the password is used once... and next time another, different, password will be used.
UBS (my bank) uses a calculator with a smart-card hosted certificate for one time password authentication.
Regulator guidance to the industry was written in 2001, and does not indicate banks should try something better than a password
Maybe US banks will try a better authentication mechanism when customers wake up and no longer have confidence in the current authentication schemes.
I live in Italy. When I subscribed the "phone banking" service, my bank issued me a credit-card-sized thing with 30 one-time passwords. Those are for payments or money transfer only - they are not needed for information.
To access the service by phone, I have to log in (user ID 6-digit number, PIN 5-digit number, the latter I can change whenever I want). If the login is failed three times in a row, the service account is locked and I have to ask for a new activation (a one-time PIN that I get *at the counter* - i have to get there myself).
If I only need information that's all. If I want to give disposition for a payment or money transfer, I am asked for one of the one-time passwords - THEY tell me which one I must use (they're numbered) - "please tell me password number 14". As soon as I am running out of passwords the bank issues another batch of 30 (again, I have to get it at the counter).
I am surprised this is anything new in the US, this has been standard here for years...
In the long run we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)
Wish people would think before they write news article headings, espically in the modern world of RSS feeds.
I'm a customer there as well. First, their system just works and is not crappy at all. Second, they provide you either with a slick HTML interface over SSL for doing your banking anywhere with a browser and the style sheet looks good on Mozilla/Linux too, I've seen worse on other banks. Third, for users of Windows, Macintosh and Linux, they provide a Java Version which is much faster and has more possibilities than the "HTML Bank". And yes, the Linux version works fine. Not every other bank in Switzerland does this.
"Snert" is dutch for split pea soup. It is very popular after skating and in winter in general
Just so you know...
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Indeed, before I saw this story, I thought something like this was standard practice on all internet banking schemes!
I have 3 bank accounts. If we add a dongle for each one I'm going to either get a purse or build myself a "Batman" utility belt!
There are better ways to do this. People just don't want to deploy them. My company Authentify is working with many people to try to fix things and would fit awesomely here.
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What we do basically is call you at a phone number (something you have) ask for a pin displayed on screen (something you know) And check a voiceprint (something you are).
So as long as you had a voiceprint recorded and a phone number you could be reached at in the system you wouldn't have to carry one time scratch off cards or RSA tokens, or
In germany people exchange money not via checks as in America but by doing direct money transfers from account to account (you exchange account numbers) so I imagine that they _need_ more account security.
A phish sends you a bogus link to THEIR web site. You enter all your info, they then play a man-in-the-middle attack and login at the bank as you. They then capture your info, move money, change mailing address and off they go.
Sure, it only works every time phish sends you email, but then again thats once too many times.
Mike www.sharecube.com