- SR

Like or Dislike: 0  1

I guess the time element is a balance; act too quickly and you only ever catch the lowest people in the hierarchy; too long and you allow the group to gather money that can be used to protect itself with…
If they got the leaders (or close) then two years is OK; if not, it’s not.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 4  0

Thanks for the link to the Spanish report.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 4  0

Interesting that with EMV smart chip widely deployed across Europe there are still enough fraud avenues available for magnetic stripe only cloning fraud (if that is all they were doing) which EMV was supposed to prevent.

Regarding the Mastercard electronic OTP card there are a number of factories producing these type of OTP cards for between $10-$15 each in the million order quantities. I have a few and to be honest the flexible screen technology isnt quite there yet. There are two methods they use for the display one is electro chromatic ink where the segment cells are liquid and a tiny electric charge darkens the electro chromic liquid to create the numbers. The second method is using e-ink where small dark particles are held in an opaque solution and then rise to the surface with a small charge. I am sure there will be lots of great applications for this technology but being embedded into payment cards is not one yet. While they have a usability security improvement over regular OTP tokens from point of view they wont be left unattended on office desks due to bulkiness the way normal tokens are the downside is that cards go into wallets which go into back pockets which get sat upon under all sorts of pressure and both screen technologies are sensitive to that sort of preassure. So while the photos look great and very hi-tech I have been able to permanently damage my sample cards relatively easily. I am sure with time the technology will harden but they have a strong issue remaining within ISO standards of .78mm thick so the cards will work in ATM machines etc and it is a difficult job from an electronic manufacturing point of view.
Of course this product doesnt prevent trojans like Zeus etc which MITB their way past OTP tokens so the online security benefits are relatively limited.

Another interesting version of these cards which has been around for awhile now is the Emue card technology (They were the first to develop this type of card token I believe and previously did trials with VISA in Europe) The Emue card has a full numeric keypad built into the card and does a type of challenge response OTP where the user enters a 6 digit code from the website into the card itself which generates a 6 digit response the user re-enters into their terminal. You can find their videos on YouTube.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 10  0

Great article! As usual Brian! Just posting to track this discussion.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 5  0

OK, great news, but I can’t help feeling that it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The fact that the investigation took TWO YEARS, while the network was allowed to operate so the police could gather evidence is very troubling. The current way that we do law enforcement is simply inadequate for this task. We need a way to take down these criminals much faster.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 9  1

Google translation is done with software. It is usually clumsy in any language.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 12  0