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The WiKID Blog

Viewing posts from January, 2009

comment-status

As with every blog out there, we've been battling comment and trackback spam. I had turned off comments altogether, but now have turned them back on. Comments are still protected by WiKID Strong Authentication, but you can add a comment anonymously. Here's how to do it:

features-and-functionality-for-consumer-acceptable

Anton Chuvakin posts a response to this post about the PayPal tokens. These posts point out a number of desired features for broad-based consumer roll-out of two-factor authentication, such as the hope for a single token to work everywhere. but fail to mention that token won't stop phishing (one of the commenters does point that out).

dhs-predicts-more-brokerage-attacks

The DHS is joining in on one of my earlier predictions: Brokerage accounts will be increasing targeted in the coming year. According to their post they are tempting accounts because they typically have more money in them. Further, typical anti-fraud transaction analysis doesn't really work because of the infrequency of transfers.

I'm convinced that brokerage accounts and other heavy transactions accounts will need cryptographically secure transaction authentication in addition to session and host/mutual authentication.

7-easy-steps-to-maximizing-your-fraudulent-stock

The SEC has noticed a dramatic rise in fraud against online brokerage accounts. This is a very interesting article in that it shows how an attacker can take over accounts and make money without necessarily removing money from those accounts. All they need is a couple of "legitimate" account that the fraudsters open, a thinly traded small-cap stock and to control a couple of pwned accounts with enough money to manipulate the targeted stock. The article describes "pumping" as using pwned accounts to drive up the price of stocks that you hold. However, you can also make money on the way down:

how-to-get-microsoft-esque-security-with-open

I was duly impressed with the recent ComputerWorld article about how Microsoft fends off 100,000 attacks per month. That is a lot of attacks! The article doesn't mention what Microsoft has spent on security, but my guess is: More than your company's revenues. So what is a poor company to do? Like wine, it is easy find a good bottle of $30 wine, the challenge is finding a good bottle of $8 wine (and were talking magnum). Luckily, thanks to open source software and the many tools built into Linux, even the stingiest of companies can have good security.

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