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Schneier: Make Banks Responsible for Phishers
abgillette writes "Writing for Wired News, security guru Bruce Schneier says that the only way to stop phishers and identity thieves is to make financial institutions solely responsible: "Push the responsibility -- all of it -- for identity theft onto the financial institutions, and phishing will go away. This fraud will go away not because people will suddenly get smart and quit responding to phishing e-mails, because California has new criminal penalties for phishing, or because ISPs will recognize and delete the e-mails. It will go away because the information a criminal can get from a phishing attack won't be enough for him to commit fraud -- because the companies won't stand for all those losses.""
Your bank already has your home address (and probably your home phone number).
All they have to do is to institute a "no email from us, ever" policy and spend some time getting that message out to their customers.
Sure, this will cut down on the ad revenue from the banks, so what?
If they absolutely need to have some form of email interaction, they can run an internal (no external SMTP connections) web-based email system so the clients (you) can email the bank's employees.
If you can't do something securely, maybe you should not be doing it.
Chase - has a login on their insecure site http://www.chase.com/, and puts a "lock" image on the page. This does not teach users where the proper lock is and dumbs down security.
Amex - does the same thing that Chase does on americanexpress.com.
CitiBank - Another bad problem, weird domain names. While Citibank uses citi.com and citibank.com, they put their credit card login on "accountonline.com"... Users have gotten used to weird domain names, and just trust the site when they see the logo. They use another domain name when linking from emails!
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Try the ING Direct site - best over the web security ever. You need your account number, some ever changing specific fraction of your social security #, zip code, or other identifier, and a set of letters that corresponds to a pin that are entered by clicking a icture of a number pad with a mouse. If "s" is assigned to "3" this time, it won't be the next time you're on.
It's a minor pain in the butt to get to your account, but definitely more secure.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
(checking to make sure "Post Anonymously" is checked)
Ok. As a guy that both works for banks and works for ISPs and deals with end users web sites and all that... I have to say I see a lot of willful ignorance on all sides.
People or the general public are really really far behind as to understanding the basics of keeping safe while using email. Sit them down in front of a computer and all of a sudden common sense is gone.
The banks on the other hand, treat these issues as PR that the marking or HR chicks take care of, when they need a techically assute attack person to counteract. I have seen (and personally warned) banks that their images were being called remotely in phishing emails. Of the dozens, only one did anything about it (by putting "EMAIL FRAUD" in a gif and replacing it with the one in the site). Preventing remote linking of images on a web server is rediculously easy, yet the large hosts don't do it, and the banks that host their own sites dont know how. Just the simple step of not allowing remote image linking without the proper http-referrer header would stop a lot of phishers in their tracks.
Yet they don't do much...
So on that respect I think making the banks financially responsible (or their web host for that matter, many of them get free web sites with their online banking service or data service providers) would help a lot.
But at the same time, it's not their fault... so why should they have the financial duty to cover consumer's losses?
So if that's the only solution, it might be ok, otherwise people need to get a serious education boost.
It's not that hard to make sure you're on the right site, make sure emails are legit, or login securely. All together, a pretty good system. Sure, you can still get tricked into entering your info elsewhere, but then you should probably not be banking online anyways.
So, what did the credit card companines do? They took their enourmous profits and paid for immense lobbying to get a law passed to insure they get their money even if you file for bankruptcy.
The laughable part of the new bankruptcy law is that no one is required to file for bankruptcy, and you can't get blood out of a turnip. If you have a house secured by a mortgage, yeah - you can save your house if you file. You could also just blow off all your creditors except the mortgage bank, pay just your house payment, and keep all your stuff you bought on unsecured credit. 7 years later, the written-off credit card accounts disappear from your credit report. You will suffer no sanctions, other than having a hard time getting credit for 7 years. There is no reason to file for bankruptcy unless you stand to lose your home without it. And if you can make your mortgage payment by defaulting on everything else, why bother with bankruptcy? They aren't going to throw you in debtor's prison. They aren't going to take your plasma TV. And, your spendthrift habits made possible the gainful employment of a lot of Circuit City and Starbucks people, not to mention the local sales taxes that went into your home county's coffers.
Don't file, just Default!
Edith Keeler Must Die
Ok. As a guy that both works for banks and works for ISPs and deals with end users web sites and all that... I have to say I see a lot of willful ignorance on all sides.
Definitely agree with you there. The companies who can actually do something about internet crime seem to do the least about it. If you email a webhost, even a reputable one about a blatent phishing site that they are hosting, they will do absolutely fuck all for at least 24-48 hours while the site gets more victims. A site designed to look exactly like PayPal or whatever should be shut down immediately, considering that it can have no ligitimate purpose.
ISPs will happily let their customers continue to be connected to the internet even when they blatently have a virus attacking other hosts (in the form of excessive traffic out of port 139, 445 et all). And these same ISPs are the ones who supply the public with 2MBit DSL lines and no security software.
I think the poster has a point. I've not had a problem with my bank, but I did have a situation with a cellular phone company that issued an account in my name to someone who was pretending to be me. My conclusion from that experience was that the phone company was much too eager to open a new account without due diligence. Ultimately I didn't have to pay anything, but the experience was moderately expensive in terms of time and fees for certified mail, etc., and quite unpleasant. A simple legal principle something like "if you give someone who claims to be me some money, and it turns out not to have been me, too bad for you" is what I'd like to see. I think then we would see some real attention paid to the problem of securing transactions over the Internet and the POTS. Yes, I suppose this would make it more expensive for banks and others to do these transactions, but it seems that a reduction in fraud would make their overall expenses lower over time. Under the present system, much of the risk and frustration is borne by the consumer, who can do little to prevent fraud other than follow the boilerplate advice given out by government and commercial representatives.
Sadly, if one of these fraudsters gets enough info on you, you may find that "you" are doing business with a bank you've never heard of with a line of credit you've never asked for ;)
Personally, I like how he thinks doing his investments in "person" keep him safe from fraud. Does he have a seat on a Stock Exchange or trusting a guy in an office hundreds of miles from an exchange who claims to represent an investment firm (CLUE: Ponzi schemes pre-date the internet)? Perhasp he invests directly in local businesses, where he carefully audits the books, and works as an "internet guy" from the back office, watching the cameras while using his voice translation software? Does he deal only in cash, never uses an ATM or checks?
I work in the anti-phishing industry, and suggestions like the article makes are pie in the sky "corporations have magic powers" crap. Make banks pay for phishing and you'll create a cottage industry of phishing victims, of the sort that plagues the insurance industry today.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Make banks pay for phishing and you'll create a cottage industry of phishing victims, of the sort that plagues the insurance industry today.
Yes, unfortunately. Until the banks pull their collective heads out of their asses and implement security measures which actually work.
For instance, right now, all I need to withdraw money from my checking account is my ATM card (or the number from it) and a four digit PIN, which I didn't assign and can't change. I don't even need a name.
There are solutions out there to make this astronomically more difficult. For instance, give the customers smart cards which use a public key authentication system. No one can do anything without that card physically on hand, and it could be made tamper-resistant enough that it couldn't be copied -- meaning that if the card is stolen, you get a new one, which can reasonably be *much* harder to do than it is now (since there's more risk for the bank) -- show up with a driver's license, birth certificate, sign something, mention some secret password, and check your thumbprint.
Right now, we're nowhere near that. In fact, remember Diebold and the voting machines? They also make ATMs. A single vulnerability at the ATM or anywhere between it and the bank and someone can get the same access credentials you do -- whereas, which the scheme I mentioned, they actually have to steal your *physical* card.
Of course, if the bank itself isn't trustworthy, you're still screwed. But the bank has an incentive to be trustworthy -- if you suspect you've been ripped off anywhere, by a phisher or by the bank itself, they have to prove that they made you read sufficient literature (always hold on to your card, if someone takes it off your person for a transaction instead of letting you swipe it yourself, they're stealing) and provide enough documentation (your public key that they've got on file, plus all the transactions you've signed with that private key, and all the verification they have that it was you who signed up for the account....)
Because the burden of proof is now on the bank to prove that you weren't ripped off.
Will people try to abuse that? Yes, but it won't get them anywhere. Any bank worth its mortar should easily repel enough frivelous cases to discourage that kind of scammer.
Could we be more paranoid? Sure. Here's an example: make the card more universal, allow it to keep several identities (ATM, credit card, driver's license) which are all user-managed, and give it a built-in display and thumbprint reader. Basically, you jack the card (or dongle, or whatever) into their payment system, check the display ($1.25 to PepsiCo for Sierra Mist), then scan your thumb (in your own card) and it "signs" the sale. This also works online -- maybe the device is shaped like a USB keychain. It's still possible to be scammed on individual purchases, but you can't be scammed out of your entire identity -- if the most you ever spend on a single purchase is $50, no one scammer can steal more than $50 from you, unless you're amazingly stupid.
If you want, I can explain the crypto behind that scenario, but suffice to say that AFAIK, the only way the vending machine example breaks is the same way it already does -- you deposit money, push a button, and it doesn't actually deliver the Coke (or whatever) -- it "eats" your money. But it can't eat more than you put in.
So, this makes your banking almost as secure as cash. And cash is backed by the US government, so... uh oh....
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Look at credit-card fraud. Do banks pay for this? Hell, yeah. Is there a cottage industry? Perhaps, but banks are EXTREMELY motivated to fix the problem, since it's costing them daily
rubbish. Look at bank's current efforts to fix CC fraud.. CVV numbers that are relatively recent introduction for distance selling, and now chip and pin for cardholder-present frauds. Until very recently you didn't need to give the CVV number for authentication, and some of my cards *still* don't have chips on them.
The point here is that the banks are very conservative. They will first add up how much fraud costs them, figure out how much it will cost them to fix (including all the hidden costs like consultants and management and new readers for stores etc), and if the cost is too great, won't do a thing.