On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 06:33:33PM -0400, mike harrison wrote:
Somehow I think they would be extremely reluctant to tell anyone what they use inside their ATMs....
Security through obscurity... most of them are not even encrypted and if they use dial-up lines (instead of dedicated lines) it's often just like the point of sale stuff.. 1200/2400 baud dial-on demand, it takes a few seconds to sync, send a short text string, get a reply auth.
On the other side.. I just inherited some hardware encrypted triple-des modems and serial interface cards, as well as a Cylink V.35 hardware encryption 'shim' with valid keys for a large banks wire transfer department... I guess I should ship it to them. From Argentina? (Just kidding, I like being an American Citizen)
As a part of other work we do here, we deal with ACH money transfers. The backup method of connection to one institution that we help a customer move millions per day through is a plain text e-mail to an AOL address. We've tried to explain, even refused to send the files, but no clue is in sight. They don't even want them zipped. Secure e-commerce is a farce, even at the corporate giant level. --Mike--
I've done work for a certain bank in Minnesota that actually had business customers email their ACH deposit files (plain text) to a Hotmail.com address, where they downloaded it from, and processed it without question (uh, hello?). At one point a company I worked for was actually using them for ACH deposits, and were told that we would have to bring the ACH file on a floppy disk because hotmail claimed that the email had a virus attached. oh yeah, every computer in the building had a modem, connected to a POTS line, waiting to be dialed into. Maybe burying money in mason jars is safer.. Matthew S. Hallacy