Online Identity and Trust

By Yohai Einav, Senior Fraud Analyst

I have six friends that serve me true
Their names are Why and What and When
and How and Where and Who.
-- Rudyard Kipling

Why quote Kipling in an online identity blog? According to all his biographies, Kipling was never a victim of identity theft, nor did he ever write a blog.

But Kipling knew something about the 6 W's, something that we, in the security industry, often forget: starting with the "Why."

Have you noticed the phenomenon: every discussion about identity theft, security and online fraud - starts with the How and What questions:

"How do fraudsters attack banks?"
"What technologies are fraudsters using?"
"What is the damage to customers?"
"What can we do to protect ourselves?"

All good questions. But, the first thing we should ask is "why?"

"Why am I being attacked?"
"Why am I a target?"
And, of course, "why isn't my competitor a target?!"

When you think of it, all banks are good sources for money (yes, they really are!), but, for some reason, not all banks are attacked by fraudsters. As I see it, not all fraud targets are born equal: there are the preferred and the less preferred. Where do you want to be?

A good example for the "Why" is Phishing:
Phishing is a huge, worldwide phenomenon. Millions of phishing emails are sent every year and thousands of new phishing sites are created every month. But the list of entities being attacked is quite constant. And you usually see a trend of bursts of phishing attacks against a specific target.

Why?

Continue reading "Online Fraud: Start with the "Why"" »

Posted by VeriSign Identity Protection Blogger at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We had a little fun with a whiteboard, magnets, some goofy voices and a video camera. Take a look at the premiere of "How VeriSign Identity Protection Keeps George Happy and Safe Online".

Posted by Jeff Burstein at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Say you've got a web application that you develop, and you want to provide your users a stronger form of authentication beyond a simple username and password. Or your users have been asking about two factor authentication, but actually implementing it never moves up on the priority list because your boss thinks it's too complicated, will require months of coding, and a giant new server farm to handle the extra authentication. Or you've got a PayPal Security Key or VIP Security Card and want to enable your own site to use it.

Welcome to the VIP Developer Test Drive!

Today we announced that we're making the API to the VIP Authentication Service freely available to developers to try out on their own. No salespeople to call, new servers to install, or paperwork - just fill out a simple web form and download. We'll give you the API documentation, SOAP WSDL, and access to your own little corner of our pilot web service.

Why are we doing this? Well, because almost every time we meet with a company's technical team, they start out skeptical -- integrating the VIP Authentication Service can't be as easy as we say it is. So we send them the API, they check it out, and then reply back, "You're right, it really is that easy." Now we're cutting out the middleman and letting you download it on your own.

We're also looking to see what ideas the developer community has for this technology. Through our experience with OATH, we've been amazed at the innovation that can happen when technology building blocks are just put out there available for anyone to use. So let us know what you think!

Now let me be clear: the Test Drive is designed for developers. There's no point and click GUI or fancy installer - it's a SOAP web services API. If you've ever written a web services client, it should be very straightforward. If you haven't, that's cool too -- we've got sample code for Java (using Apache Axis 1.4) and C# (using .NET 2.0) to get you started.

Check it out at http://vipdeveloper.verisign.com. Comments or questions? Comment below or email us at vipdeveloper@verisign.com.

Posted by Jeff Burstein at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Posted by Vijai Shankar, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at VeriSign, Inc.

I posted earlier today about the difficulty in remembering passwords, security questions, our daily tasks etc. and mentioning consumers to ask organizations to introduce secure, yet painless authentication methods. Here's another incentive for organizations to make life easy yet secure for consumers at a lower cost. VeriSign is now offering up to 5,000 FREE CREDENTIALS to each organization joining the VeriSign Identity Protection Network by Sept 30, 2008. This is a great incentive for organizations looking to deploy strong or two-factor authentication and be a part of a Network enables consumers to use a single credential across multiple site. The timing is opportune. With quite a few folks from the security industry at the RSA Conference next week in San Francisco, if you want to know more information stop by the VeriSign Booth # 1316 at the conference and we can help.

~Vijai

Posted by Vijai Shankar at 02:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Vijai Shankar, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at VeriSign, Inc.

We are seeing more and more articles about the difficulty remembering username and passwords. To add to the list along with our other stuff to remember i.e. household chores, birthdays etc., we now have to remember the new trend of security questions along with username and passwords. I was having a problem logging into one of my student loan accounts, which not only had a username and password but a set of security questions in a PARTICULAR order. Phew, needless to say I was locked out and had to call in, listen to some crazy call center music and after 15 minutes of waiting, spoke to an agent to unlock my account.

I saw this article in The Wall Street Journal about the daunting task of managing passwords, a complicated system she came up with, aggravated by the added task to manage answers to security questions. Can't we make all this simpler and yet secure? How about a stronger authentication and painless authentication process like using a single device be it mobile phone, tokens, SMS etc. to generate unique codes eachtime at all my online sites? How about asking your organizations that you transact online with to join a trusted Network that enables you consumers to use a single credential across multiple sites thus offering secure yet painless authentication process? The answer is right here, the VeriSign Identity Protection Network. Now is a great time for your organizations to join and be a part of a Network that will drive consumer adoption across the globe.

~Vijai

Posted by Vijai Shankar at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Kerry Loftus

I drove my 13-year-old and his friends to one of their activities recently (yes, I have a minivan) and their conversation was really interesting and eye opening. I quickly called my gal pals in Erie, PA to find out if they were hearing the same and got the affirmative so this is not just a 'valley' phenomena. All of our kids are online and many are using various email, IM and social networking applications. Did you know that they all know each other's usernames and passwords? If they don't know the password part, they can very quickly guess (I chimed in at one point and asked them if they knew anything about 'strong passwords'-- most of them replied that they just use 'password'!). They didn't really think protecting the information was important.

It's probably harmless to sign in as your friend on IM and send one of the girls in your class a provocative message, but couldn't that be the tip of the iceberg? What about online harassment when pranks become more than just kid fun? Our kids are revealing more and more of themselves on the public internet everyday through these applications and many of us have done the right parental things in response. We know to put the computer in a more public spot in our house; we know to ask what they're doing online and periodically check over their shoulders. But did you know how easily kids can "become" each other online? By logging in their email, IM and social networking sites with their guessable usernames and passwords, it's pretty easy to impersonate almost anyone they know. In addition to these guessable usernames and passwords, I'd like to see my teenager's accounts protected with something he physically has in his possession (enter a second-factor one-time password credential). Let's give our kids real, permanent control over what they want to communicate to the rest of the world.

Posted by Kerry Loftus at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Jen Gilburg

Last week a news headline from across the pond proclaimed:

"Abbey wary of two-factor authentication. Bank decides against password verification devices because customers consider them a hassle."

Turns out Abbey, a major retail bank in the UK, did a survey on strong authentication. Turns out that two-thirds of those surveyed did not want the "hassle" of two-factor authentication. Turns out those surveyed even poo-pooed challenge questions.

So Abbey decided to act on the survey results. They decided to do nothing. And they decided to shout it out for all (including the fraudsters) to hear!

I question which business schools their marketing folks graduated from.

I wonder too what context the survey questions were raised (perhaps a brief explanation of how two-factor authentication protects against phishing would have been in order!). I wonder if the mere 1000 users surveyed really represented the fraud concerns of their overall user population. I wonder if they bothered to survey any of their customers who were not using their e-banking services- perhaps because of fraud concerns. And most importantly I wonder if the one-third of respondents who wanted stronger protection against fraud will take their business elsewhere...

Now here is a different survey. It is one we did last summer of customers who were using our VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Network. Those who were actually using two-factor authentication to protect one or more of their online accounts. Of those surveyed 81% thought it was easy to use. And over half wanted to use their same token at their broker, healthcare provider and gaming site.

If I were a marketing person at an online outlet- I would figure out a way to leverage those statistics to attract customers away from the Abbey banks of the world who are not taking customer's fraud concerns seriously. "Hey- you with a PayPal Security Key- come use it over here".

At minimum- what Abbey should do is to offer strong authentication to the users who want it. Isn't it a much better strategy to offer security as an option versus risking losing customers to those who do?

Posted by Jen Gilburg at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Vicente Silveira, Sr. Product Manager for VIP Fraud Detection Service

The never ending parade of consumer data leakage and the inevitable fraud that follows added another participant this week with the Hannaford incident. This time, the damage amounts to 4.2 million credit and debit cards being compromised. It is early to tell all the ramifications of this incident, but the unraveling already started with the first salvo of class-action lawsuits against Hannaford.

When I see something like this happen, I'm always left to wonder: what is the true cost of a fraud incident ?

Looking back to some of the high-water mark incidents of the past we can have some hints of what the direct cost involved may look like. Take TJ Maxx for example: back in January 2007 TJ reported a 45 million (or 94 million) card compromise, which was followed by an estimated $68 million to $83 million in fraud losses on Visa cards alone. All this damage led to legal action and a settlement last September with TJ reserving more than $120 million to cover for it. Fast forward to the beginning of this week, and TJ is still in the news with a massive notification campaign that has been kicked off with mailings, magazine and newspaper adds to try to reach customers that may have had their cards compromised.

Based on all of this, it shouldn't be unreasonable to think that the direct costs associated with this fraud incident are north of $100 million dollars, specially when you include legal costs, advertising and G&A overhead to manage all the mess. All the urgent security assessments, patching and fixing shouldn't have come cheap either.

The indirect costs are harder to access but in my view even more dramatic: one can only imagine the amount of brand damage when you have to engage tens of millions of your customers repeatedly over more than one year, reminding them you didn't manage to keep their sensitive data safe. The cost goes up and is shared with all of us with the broader backlash against e-commerce and online businesses in general, where consumer confidence is melting away faster than I can say Global Warming. We are already seeing that in the polls: according to a recent YouGov survey in the UK almost half of the women in Great Britain would be ready to stop shopping and banking online in order to reduce their risk of ID fraud.

It got to a point where even corrective and preventive measures are becoming vectors for data leakage, such as this bank's attempt to notify one customer about a fraud issue in his account ending up compromising information on other people's accounts.

Sooner or later we will have to implement pro-active, stronger security measures for the broader online infrastructure, the only question is how much organizations and consumers will have to pay until that day arrives.

Posted by Vicente Silveira at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Vicente Silveira, Sr. Product Manager for VIP Fraud Detection Service

If you live in the UK, the answer would be a little over twenty thousand dollars (at current exchange rates) for the average adult internet user, a nice bounty for phishers, bot herders, malware coders and other cyber-criminals to go after.

This is based on highlights of a recent YouGov survey that estimates European Internet users are risking up to 1.6 trillion dollars by sharing personal and financial data with sites that are not adequately protected, with UK Internet users responding for a 731 billion chunk of the total amount.

What the research also suggests is that the ubiquity of social networking and other data sharing sites has increased dramatically the quantity and sensitivity of the information available on the web, with users volunteering more and more details in order to complete their profiles, make more friends or establish new connections. Many consumers are giving away their date of birth (75%), their home address (70%) and even their mother's maiden name (68%). People sharing such data may not realize that it is not too hard to aggregate all this information and use it to compromise internet banking accounts and other sensitive online applications.

That is why consumer education plays a key role in making sure users understand what is appropriate to share and where to share it. And believe it or not some of it is working, as the YouGov research shows that consumers are becoming more aware of security symbols such as the padlock (69 percent) or a security mark like the VeriSign® Secured Seal (41 percent).

Moving forward, tools such as Microsoft IE7 and EV certificates will ease the learning curve, but at the end of the day good old common sense continues to be key when deciding whether to share sensitive data online.

Posted by Vicente Silveira at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Jen Gilburg, Director of Business Development for Identity and Authentication Solutions

I have a confession to make. I was almost a victim of fraud.

It involved Craig's List, the selling of a refrigerator, a random check for $3000 over the amount being sent for payment, the panic of the buyer for overpaying and them begging me to 'Western Union' them the erroneous overpayment once I cashed the check. I was even 'offered' $200 of the overpayment for my troubles.

I am embarrassed to admit- I got all the way to the bank. I actually deposited the check- then in a last minute of "this doesn't seem right" had them run the check and low and behold...

Truth is I was taken off guard, in the middle of a move, not really paying attention-- just happy to have the refrigerator out of my garage.

What is mortifying is that I have been working in security sector of high tech for the last 20 years. The fact I didn't immediately rip up the check shows how even the most security minded of consumers can fall prey.

Last week there was a phishing report by California Berkeley Law School researcher Chris Hoofnagle. The report shows the increase volumes of reported identity theft and highlighted the most frequently phished sites -- the numbers were incredible. The chatter around the report in the press and on other blogs put the stress on consumer awareness. I would argue (from experience!) that is not the answer.

The answer lies in fool proofing websites. Making it so that even if someone did get a hold of your userID and password- they cannot gain access to your accounts. A layered approach including second factor authentication is indeed the answer.

Ironically- many financial institutions that we talk to about two-factor authentication often take the stance that "their customers don't want it". Conversely every member of our VIP network who is providing opt-in second factor authentication has exceeded expectation of the amount of users who indeed opt-in.

Hoofnagle advocates that identity theft information be made available so consumers can make educated decisions on whom to bank with based on security risk. If consumers took his advice banks and ecommerce sites might actually be forced to take action.

I will look forward to the day that my bank protects me should my guard ever drop again.

Posted by Jen Gilburg at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)