Phishers Defeat Citibank's 2-Factor Authentication

An anonymous reader writes "Crypto experts and U.S. Government regulations (FFIEC) have been pushing the need for financial Web sites to move beyond mere passwords and implement so-called "two-factor authentication" — the second factor being something the user has in their physical possession like a token — as the answer to protecting customers from phishing attacks that use phony e-mails and bogus Web sites to trick users into forking over their personal and financial data. According to a Washington Post Blog, 'SecurityFix,' phishers have now started phishing for the two-factor token ID from the user as well. The most interesting part is that these tokens only give you one minute to log in to the bank until that key will expire. The phishers employ a man-in-the-middle attack against the victim and Citibank to log in via php and conduct money transfers immediately when logged in." (An update to the blog entry notes that the phishing site mentioned has since been shut down.)

Comments

Good.

[bytesex]

My bank has had this for ages. How's about protecting you from the man in the middle attack by a little extra procedure, though ? Immediately after you've done the transactions through the web and you log out, the bank sends you an encrypted email with all your transactions in it. Those emails can be parseable for your own financial package as well. And it should give you some time to cancel all the transactions that are bogus. There can be no forgery involved, since the bank _always_ sends those mails. Just an idea, I know there's no cure for utter stupidity.