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Schneier: Make Banks Responsible for Phishers
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Oct 06, 2005 04:38 PM
from the now-there's-an-idea dept.
from the now-there's-an-idea dept.
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.""
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Good idea! (well, kinda) (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way we can get the government to do such a thing... and such losses may even effect federal insurance and our interest rates...
Depending on how many morons there are getting hit by phishing scams, this could have a large effect.
Of course... that's assuming it ever got made into 'law'...
Simple solution - no email from banks. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
It's a good point but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The technology will make it almost impossible . (Score:5, Insightful)
case in point:
I recently received an actual e-mail from PayPal, this e-mail suggested that my on-file credit card was about to expire. The first thing that keyed me in and made me actually read this mail was that they referenced the last four digits of said card. Next, they suggested that I logon to their website and update the credit card's expiration date. Most importantly they didn't even offer a link to paypal.com, they simply said to logon and then gave instructions as to how to change it. Not the first link in the whole e-mail. This effectively eliminates fraud as a possibility. While it is still possible that paypal.com itself could be hijacked or some other esoteric scheme, the 99.9% possibilities are all eliminated simply by not providing any link.
Parent
You read one? (Score:3, Insightful)
The part about not having any links in the email is good. But not good enough. You could have been told to go to mypaypalsecurity.com and logon. Then you'd be back to the man-in-the-middle attack.
Not to mention that most people who do read those emails will not know enough to not click on a link when the company involved has not specifically stated that they will not send links.
Re:You read one? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is where user education and organizational consistency come in. IIRC, PayPal does everything through www.paypal.com. If you've never, ever logged in somewhere other than that one site, you might be slightly suspicious to see mypaypalsecurity.com. And if every administrative message that really comes from PayPal has no links, you might notice something funny about the message that does have one. (It's not a cure-all, of course -- witness the number of successful "Apply this update from Microsoft!" trojans. But it'll make it easier for some people to spot the phish.)
Contrast this with, say, Citibank, which does some stuff through citibank.com, some through accountonline.com, I think has citicards.com and at one point was still using c2it.com. And I think they sometimes use third parties for email and redirectors. There's no consistency, so if you get something that says citibanklogin.com, you think "Oh, they've just added a new domain" and click/type it... and then you're on the fake site.
Parent
Re:The technology will make it almost impossible . (Score:3, Interesting)
A hypothetical:
I set up a website to mimic PayPal's. I sniff traffic on a network that you happen to be routed through and spot the legitimate PayPal email you received. My script intercepts that email, finds those "last four digits," and drops them into the site I set up. When you visit PayPal.com, I route your traffic to my fake PayPal site. You don't know the difference, so you continue to enter your new credit card information. Once completed, I change the routin
Here are the steps. (Score:3, Interesting)
#2. Fake the site. This is the easy part.
#3. Get the traffic to the fake site. Again, this will require ISP access (see #1). But it would be simple for
Re:The technology will make it almost impossible . (Score:3, Insightful)
Even organizations that should know better sometimes fail to do this. I once received an email message from an address at openvenue.com claiming to be from the ACM and asking me to go to confirmit.com to fill out a survey. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to actually be from the ACM. (To add further insult, when I emailed the ACM about it, the two line response was followed by two copies of a t
yeah, right (Score:3, Interesting)
While we're at it, let's make Slashdot responsible for trolls.
No Chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with "all of the above?" It would seem to me that a multi-pronged attack to the problem would be best, because I really don't see how "just" holding the financial institutions responsible will make the problem disappear completely. Scammers are creative, after all, and the people who fall for their scams can be pretty friggin' dumb.
Dear Bruce Schneier (Score:4, Funny)
We read with interest your comments on preventing phishing activities.
Our conclusion is that we are not taking appropriate measures to prevent phishing.
Therefore, we have acted to prevent such damages in the future. This action is the only certain method of fraud provention: Your account has been closed and we have placed you on a universal banking blacklist to prevent you being able to open an account with any other bank.
Thank you for your refreshing point of view, and good luck.
Sincerly,
Your Bank
Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Forcing the responsibility on the banks is only going to encourage the banks to treat the customers worse than they already do.
People are just too damn stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Thankfully, that average Joe is also the same moron who will fall victim to phishing instead of me. I'll never lose my money, so it's not my problem. A connundrum, if you will - the only people smart enough to do anything about it (or be willing to do anything about it) are the ones that such scams don't apply to anyway.
(No offense to any geeks/intellects happened to be named Joe)
Hrm (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever... (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes perfect sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you tighten up all these processes then just knowing five pieces of data about a person won't let you access their accounts. Why sign your credit card at all when no-one even LOOKS at the signature and YOU are liable for fraudulent use of the card?
Re:It makes perfect sense... (Score:3, Informative)
VISA/MC merchant requirements are that it does not matter what the signature looks like, if the card is signed, then they are to accept it as valid unless there are other extenuating circumstances. They do this because VISA/MC wish to make using their cards as easy as using cash. Extra security measures like you describe reduce the utility of the cards and risk pushing people back to using cash.
YOU are liable for fraudulent use of the
The real problem is e-mail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Legislation shouldn't be used as a way of solving a technical problem, and this is really just a technical problem with e-mail.
Alright... (Score:3, Insightful)
If I directly gave the scammer enough info to do such financial damage, how can the bank be held responsible? It's like if I forget my wallet on the table at some fast food restaraunt, and someone picks it up and maxes out each of my credit cards. Should the bank be held accountable that I forgot my wallet? Banks should make a better effort to confirm identities in cases of large sums of money being transfered/spent under strange circumstances, but holding them financially accountable for my own faults?
Never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this: The credit card companies were getting reamed by people getting a boatload of credit cards, running them up to the limit, then filing for bankruptcy.
Now, the real solution to this would have been for the credit card companies to have done their jobs and really examined the credit ratings of the people to whom they gave these cards, and to have given people reasonable credit limits (I shall use myself for an example - I have a single credit card which has a limit of well over one-half of my yearly salary - there is NO REASON for me to have that much unsecured credit - and no, I did NOT request that limit, they gave it to me on their own).
However, that would require the credit card companies to actually do work and would impair their ability to take people almost to bankruptcy and make lots of money on revolving credit interest.
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.
Now, what is another word for "credit card company"? I'll give you a hint - it starts with "B", ends in "K", and has 4 letters. Wanna buy a vowel (at 15% APR)?
Making banks actually take responsibility for phishing means banks would have to do work on their online banking and credit applications. It would mean they would have to make it harder for people to buy things online (read: go into debt). It would CUT INTO THEIR PROFITS!
So what is a good, responsible banker to do? Call 1-800-RENT-A-SENATOR.
1-800-RENT-A-SENATOR (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Never happen (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
Parent
Diluted Phish (Score:3, Interesting)
Chase, Citibank & Amex are big problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
Chase - has a login on their insecure site http://www.chase.com/ [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!
Re:Chase, Citibank & Amex are big problems. (Score:5, Informative)
The location of the form is irrelevant, all that matters is that the action that it submits to is secured, and from a quick look at the HTML it is.
No, that's not enough. https gives you two things:
(1) it encrypts your answer, and
(2) it authenticates the site you're talking to.
The situation with Chase [chase.com] does not provide guarantee number 2: if they're not using https then you would have to check the source every single time to make sure that no hacker replaced some packets in flight to steal your account information.
I agree with the grandparent: login pages that don't use https: are a pityful security practice, regardless of whether the form gets submitted over https.
Parent
At least make them properly liable (Score:3, Insightful)
Identity infringement... (Score:3, Interesting)
Push the responsibility -- all of it -- for identity theft onto the financial institutions, and phishing will go away.
Isn't the responsibility already on the financial institutions? If someone takes out a loan in your name, do you really think you're required to pay it back?
The victims of "identity theft" are the banks. The consumers only pay in the form of higher fees and interest rates.
We pay, no matter who pays (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, we already have this with CC numbers, it's almost no hassle at all to get unauthorized charges removed. Yet CC fraud still happens, if anything, even more widespread than before. The little 3 digit number on the back was nice, but does it really slow anything down? After all, that number is now part of the databases, just like the expiration date.
So who pays for CC fraud? The CC company? No, they backcharge the merchant. Does the merchant pay? No, he raises costs for all his customers, either in hassle proving identity, or by raising costs.
In the end the customer always pays, so we might as well make it easy for him to solve problems.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I don't believe adding additional protections to the websites is the idea. The idea is that the richest institutions in the world (banks) should be fighting phishers. They have the clout and the wearwithall to easily take scammers to court, and likely have branches in enough countries to try them locally, rather than sending futile "DMCA cease and desist"-like letters to non-US countries.
This might turn out to be a good idea, or maybe the banks will realize that the scammers are just doing what banks (historically) do, which is ripoff the poor and uneducated. Anywho, being a well-informed and adept engineer of the internet age, I still do all my investing in person because I'm paranoid as heck =].
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 ;)
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're not. They're "give the problems to those with the money, sense and incentives to fix it" arguments. Makes excellent sense to me. My guess would be that you're either (a) too wrapped up in the "anti-phishing industry" to step back and wonder why we need such an industry; (b) invested too heavily in the "anti-phishing industry" to accept that it may not be needed; or (c) just not amenable to lateral thinking.
Seriously. 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. Where five years ago was that CVV code on the back of your credit card? Where was "Verified by Visa"? These are industry programs introduced by the industry to reduce fraud. Why? Because it costs them.
Make phishing cost the industry, and you betcha they'll be right on it. And as far as I can tell, they wouldn't have to do much to top the efforts of the "anti-phishing industry" to date.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
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....
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
- Free with every account, you get a credit-card sized, battery powered random number generator. In addition to your password, you have to enter the number displayed on the generator, which changes every thirty seconds. (These exist.)
- The bank only lets you access your account from a computer you designate. This could be done through the MAC adress of your NIC, or through a hash function based on your hardware configuration. Authoriz
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac addresses can be faked and credit cards (and random number generators!) can be stolen. And whatever technical solution you can possibly find, it cannot interface with an insecure OS (such as Windows or many *nixs, prolly Macs too, but I'm not too savvy there) and remain secure. And as long as the vast majority of people use insecure OSes, a secure technical solution is unfeasible.
Thus, I disagree whole-heartedly. Law is the best safe-gaurd against criminals. Providing and advocating a legal recourse against online fraud will provide an avenue for banks to fight back. And it would be completely transparent for the end-user. They keep getting scammed while the banks go around pressing charges on the scammers until they're gone. I know it's fighting the symptom, not the cause, but sometimes that's better.
We all want to code like Torvalds and redesign the entire system from the bottom up whenever theres the teensiest bug, but we also all know that's unrealistic. Look at law as a CPU-intensive bug-fix for society. It'll provide it quick and easy stop-gap to the problems created by shifting to the e-commerce. We can worry about properly rebuilding the infrastructure in the next update =].
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Security in layers.. Spyware and keyloggers on my computer installed at random by a hole in IE is completely different from having that same spyware AND someone getting into my house and stealing my key generator (random number generator). I have incoming SSH allowed from outside, but only from 2 source ip addresses. I also force the use of existing authorized keys and passphrase only. Each of these is not fool proof but combined, it is magnatudes harder to hack into then running plain old telnet or SSH with no restrictions. Yes, if I was singled out and someone specifically wanted to hack into my specific computer, chances are they would find a way. Phishing attempts are exactly the opposite though, broadcasting out looking for the people that will bite the hook, not elaborate targetting of specific people. I am guessing here but I'd say bank account phishing successes would be 99.99% less with nothing more then a key fob number generator used as part of the password. I think the MAC would be useless for security as that can be taken from the same computer that the keylogger or phishing attempt originated from.
Thus, I disagree whole-heartedly. Law is the best safe-gaurd against criminals.
What world do you live in? Do you leave the keys in your car? Put the windows up? Leave the porch light on? Have an alarm in the car? Use a club? Shove your cds or cell phone under the seat? That is the same thing, security in layers. It is already illegal for someone to steal your car and the police already have the laws and power to catch criminals.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only problem I see with this is that one of the major reasons for online banking is the convenience of being able to do it anywere. Limiting it to o
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
-jcr
Parent
Try the ING Direct site (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a minor pain in the butt to get to your account, but definitely more secure.
Parent
Re:Please explain (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 ta
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:education? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Candy is a tangible commodity. Credit card details are not. You give candy to somebody, you have no candy. You give credit card details to somebody, your credit card details are still there, in your wallet, next to the photo of the kids, so there's nothing wrong.
2. People are stupid. There are still people crying that wearing a seat belt is a volation of their rights. Obviously, anything that goes bad is somebody else's fault. Of course misuse of credit card details is not my p
Re:education? (Score:3, Insightful)
Phish (Score:3, Funny)
Teach someone to phish, and they may try to get your money!
Re:I don't care who does what with who (Score:4, Funny)
Hi, i just lost $600,000. Can you restore my backup please?
Parent