Slashdot Mirror
Scammers Work Around Two-Factor Authentication With Social Engineering
mask.of.sanity writes "Thieves have made off with $45k after they intercepted a victim's two factor online banking codes used to verify large transactions. The scammers got the Australian executive's mobile number from his daughter, and work place details from his willing secretary. Armed with this data, they bluffed Vodafone which ported his phone number, meaning the criminals could verify the bank's two factor verification codes generated during their spending spree and the victim never knew a thing."
He received an SMS which he believed to be from Vodaphone, stating that they were having network difficulties and he would experience loss of cell service for the next 24 hours.
This just goes to show that you should always have additional protections in place for protecting accounts (in this case, a mobile number) that can be used to control, secure, or otherwise materially modify other important accounts.
They didn't steal anything real.
I don't believe in imaginary property.
So the banks say it's not their problem, it's the fault of mobile operators for making numbers portable. Yet the banks were offered access to the national mobile database so they could check if a number was recently ported, but declined to use the information. Meanwhile the fraudsters are getting away with their winnings...
The point is that if you trust your cell phone to be a 2nd authentication factor for your banking, you've contracted out your security to [the dumbest customer service rep at] your mobile carrier.
Also, being broke is probably a pretty good strategy for avoiding these kinds of problems.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
no form of security is absolutely 100% perfect in every way..
Right; but that's not something new. No bank vault has ever been 100% safe either. The difference is that the bank takes responsibility for that so they ensure that it's "good enough", whatever that means. If money gets stolen from the bank vault they don't say "oh that was money from your account; sorry". With electronic security, there's often a level where they blame the failure of their own security measures on "identity theft" and make it the customer's responsibility. Two factor authentication of this kind is fine for a transaction of a few thousand dollars; It's not enough for transactions of hundreds of thousands of dollars. For 45k AUD that's a judgement call. `
This case is not like most American and some European banks though; Commonwealth Bank discovered the problem its self, is paying off the cost of the transaction and, even so, warned their customer. When they take the responsibility for the losses then what systems to use or not use become their commercial judgement. They looked at an MNP security system and decided there was something wrong with it. Maybe they now change their mind, maybe not. That's exactly the right thing. Hopefully they can persuade Vodafone to at least send a text message warning customers that their number is being ported before they actually do it in future.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Everyone is focusing on just the (in)security of the second factor, the telephone number, but what's missing from this story is that the scammers obviously also got their hands on much more information from this person first: they knew his bank login details (account name, password), and they knew his daughter's identity and managed to contact her.
The solution for SMS as my bank implements it, is that SMS is never sent to a forwarded number. That's arranged between the bank and the carriers or so, I don't know the technical details, but SMS is sent only to the original number. That's already a safeguard against arranging numbers to be forwarded, which other commenters note is quite easy to accomplish.
Anyway it is the classic story of when something goes wrong, it's usually not a single issue that went wrong. It's almost always an array of factors that have to come together "just right" to make it work. While it may be a good idea to review the security of the SMS as second factor, one should also look at how the criminals got their hands on the first factor and the rest of the information.
As someone on Vodafone in Australia, this should immediately have started ringing alarm bells.
No way they'd have the problems fixed in 24 hours.
If you're not broke, you don't need to worry either, because the scammers can soon fix that.
Not True. The product is AFAIK, A Telstra product under which they use SMS to provide a "token" as an additional factor.
Given that there have been many confirmed examples of MNP ( Malicious Number Porting ) in Australia, this is known weak security. Under the circumstances, its entirely reasonable to assume that the Bank knew this was likely.
However I can't see them rushing out to address the issue in the near future. In fact, with some banks, it's impossible to turn off the ability to transfer out large sums of money. You can turn it off easy enough, but anyone who accesses the system can turn it back on by default by clicking a screen saying you agree to the risk. :(
All the major banks in Australia have this form of security. On the other hand, all the credit unions ( everyone except the "Big 4" Banks ) use VIP ( Verisign Identity Protection IIRC ) which can be downloaded to most smartphones and works as a soft-token.
Security in Australia, as with much of the world, is severely compromised by CEOs and CTOs who really don't understand it and as long as they can blame someone else, then due diligence is done.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
I assume that's something you picked up from the movies. Any bank which stored a significant percentage of cash in a bank vault would be out of business pretty quick.
And the money in "your" bank account is the bank's money, not yours. You loaned it to them therefore it's their responsibility. If they happen to try to pass that responsibility back to you... Well, you'd have to be pretty dumb to sign that contract.
Your relationship with your bank is that of a creditor. The money is no longer yours, and the bank can pretty much do what it pleases with the money.
The responsibility for security lies with the bank.
HTH.
Deleted
It's disturbing when the scammers have better customer service than the actual phone company.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.