[ILUG] Net banks with linux support

[Timothy Murphy]

On Sun 17 Jul 2005 13:40, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:

> > I feel both online banking and ATM machines are reasonably safe.  The
> > chances of being mugged at an ATM machine strike me as much higher
> > than any electronic attack.
>
> Depends on your definition of electronic attack. If you include
> phishing, the risks for electronic attacks are massive. 

I take it phishing - pardon my ignorance -
is responding to email asking you to give your credit card number
or other account details?
Are many people caught by these?
One would have to be reasonably stupid, I would have thought.
Roughly as stupid as people responding to Nigerian ladies 
with 2 billion dollars to dispose of.

Some time ago I asked BoI and AIB whether they were liable
for fraudulent transactions if no signature was required.
My recollection is the AIB agreed they were liable,
but BoI did not. (It could have been the other way round.)

One (or maybe both) said that most of the frauds they dealt with
involved payment to pornography sites,
where it actually was quite difficult to work out
who was telling the truth.

[This was a couple of years ago.]

> They still find them [electronic fraudsters]
> 	http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/UCAM-CL-TR-560.pdf
> and react to them badly;
> 	http://cryptome.org/pacc.htm

I found these quite interesting.
But they were about insider fraud, by bank employees.
I actually found them quite reassuring
(though their intention was the opposite)
as I always assumed it would be quite easy
for my bank manager to transfer all my money to his account,
if he felt that way inclined,

> > Are there figures for the sums lost by fraud at ATM machines or online
> > banking?  Most of the scare stories one reads strike me as urban
> > myths.  Or else they are put about by firms involved in electronic
> > security.
>
> The recent physical ones are definitely not myths, they've recoverd
> devices in Dublin, Cork and Galway. I've never seen figures that
> wern't just wild estimation though.

Yes, it's the enormous figures - usually in billions - of estimated losses
that I find implausible in these stories.
They never seem to be about Mrs Jones of 13 Main Stree, Ballygob,
having 123 euros stolen from her account.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland