Legal issues

Digital Exclusion and Fraud – the Dark Side of Payments Authentication

Today, the Which? consumer rights organisation released the results from its study of how people are excluded from financial services as a result of banks changing their rules to mandate that customers use new technology. The research particularly focuses on banks now requiring that customers register a mobile phone number and be able to receive security codes in SMS messages while doing online banking or shopping. Not only does this change result in digital exclusion – customers without mobile phones or good network coverage will struggle to make payments – but as I discuss in this post, it’s also bad for security.

SMS-based security codes are being introduced to help banks meet their September 2019 deadline to comply with the Strong Customer Authentication requirements of the EU Payment Services Directive 2. These rules state that before making a payment from a customer’s account, the bank must independently verify that the customer really intended to make this payment. UK banks almost universally have decided to meet their obligation by sending a security code in an SMS message to the customer’s mobile phone and asking the customer to type this code into their web browser.

The problem that Which? identified is that some customers don’t have mobile phones, some that do have mobile phones don’t trust their bank with the number, and even those who are willing to share their mobile phone number with the bank might not have network coverage when they need to make a payment. A survey of Which? members found that nearly 1 in 5 said they would struggle to receive the security code they need to perform online banking transactions or online card payments. Remote locations have poorer network coverage than average and it is these areas that are likely to be disproportionately affected by the ongoing bank branch closure programmes.

Outsourcing security

The aspect of this scenario that I’m particularly interested in is why banks chose SMS messages as a security technology in the first place, rather than say sending out dedicated authentication devices to their customers or making a smartphone app. SMS has the advantage that customers don’t need to install an app or have the inconvenience of having to carry around an extra authentication device. The bank also saves the cost of setting up new infrastructure, other than hooking up their payment systems to the phone network. However, SMS has disadvantages – not only does it exclude customers in areas of poor network coverage, but it also effectively outsources security from the bank to the phone networks.

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The Government published its draft domestic abuse bill, but risks ignoring the growing threat of tech abuse

Dr Leonie Tanczer, who leads UCL’s “Gender and IoT” research team, reflects on the release of the draft Domestic Abuse Bill and points out that in its current form, it misses emphasis on emerging forms of technology-facilitated abuse.

On the 21st of January, the UK Government published its long-awaited Domestic Abuse Bill. The 196-page long document focuses on a wide range of issues from providing a first statutory definition of domestic abuse to the recognition of economic abuse as well as controlling and coercive non-physical behaviour. In recent years, abuse facilitated through information and communication technologies (ICT) has been growing. Efforts to mitigate these forms of abuse (e.g. social media abuse or cyberstalking) are already underway, but we expect new forms of “technology-facilitated abuse” (“tech abuse”) to become more commonplace amongst abusive perpetrators.

We are currently seeing an explosion in the number of Internet-connected devices on the market, from gadgets like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home hub, to “smart” home heating, lighting, and security systems as well as wearable devices such as smartwatches. What these products have in common is their networked capability, and many also include features such as remote, video, and voice control as well as GPS location tracking. While these capabilities are intended to make modern life easier, they also create new means to facilitate psychological, physical, sexual, economic, and emotional abuse as well as controlling and manipulating behaviour.

Although so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT) usage is not yet widespread (there were 7.5 billion total connections worldwide in 2017), GSMA expects there to be 25 billion devices globally by 2025. Sadly, we have already started to see examples of these technologies being misused. An investigation last year by the New York Times showed how perpetrators of domestic abuse could use apps on their smartphones to remotely control household appliances like air conditioning or digital locks in order to monitor and frighten their victims. In 2018, we saw a husband convicted of stalking after spying on his estranged wife by hacking into their wall-mounted iPad.

The risk of being a victim of tech abuse falls predominantly on women and especially migrant women. This is a result of men still being primarily in charge of the purchase and maintenance of technical systems as well as women and girls being over-proportionally affected by domestic abuse.

The absence of ‘tech abuse’ in the draft bill

While the four objectives of the draft Bill (promote awareness, protect and support, transform the justice process, improve performance) are to be welcomed, the absence of sufficient reference to the growing rise of tech abuse is a significant omission and missed opportunity.

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Protecting human rights by avoiding regulatory capture within surveillance oversight

Regulation is in the news again as a result of the Home Office blocking surveillance expert Eric Kind from taking up his role as Head of Investigation at the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO) – the newly created agency responsible for regulating organisations managing surveillance, including the Home Office. Ordinarily, it would be unheard of for a regulated organisation to be able to veto the appointment of staff to their regulator, particularly one established through statute as being independent. However, the Home Office was able to do so here by refusing to issue the security clearance required for Kind to do his job. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner, therefore, can’t override this decision, the Home Office doesn’t have to explain their reasoning, nor is there an appeal process.

Behaviour like this can lead to regulatory capture – where the influence of the regulated organisation changes the effect of regulation to direct away from the public interest and toward the interests of the organisations being regulated. The mechanism of blocking security clearances is specific to activities relating to the military and intelligence, but the phenomenon of regulatory capture is more widespread. Consequently, regulatory capture has been well studied, and there’s a body of work describing tried and tested ways to resist it. If the organisations responsible for surveillance regulation were to apply these recommendations, it would improve both the privacy of the public and the trust in agencies carrying out surveillance. When we combine these techniques with advanced cryptography, we can do better still.

Regulatory capture is also a problem in finance – likely contributing to high-profile scandals like Libor manipulation, and payment-protection-insurance misselling. In previous articles, we’ve discussed how regulators’ sluggish response to new fraud techniques has led to their victims unfairly footing the bill. Such behaviour by regulators is rarely the result of clear corruption – regulatory capture is often more subtle. For example, the skills needed by the regulator may only be available by hiring staff from the regulated organisations, bringing their culture and mindset along with them. Regulators’ staff often find career opportunities within the regulator limited and so are reluctant to take a hard-line against the regulated organisation and so close off the option of getting a job there later – likely at a much higher salary. Regulatory capture resulting from sharing of staff and their corresponding culture is, I think, a key reason for surveillance oversight bodies having insufficient regard for the public interest.

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New threat models in the face of British intelligence and the Five Eyes’ new end-to-end encryption interception strategy

Due to more and more services and messaging applications implementing end-to-end encryption, law enforcement organisations and intelligence agencies have become increasingly concerned about the prospect of “going dark”. This is when law enforcement has the legal right to access a communication (i.e. through a warrant) but doesn’t have the technical capability to do so, because the communication may be end-to-end encrypted.

Earlier proposals from politicians have taken the approach of outright banning end-to-end encryption, which was met with fierce criticism by experts and the tech industry. The intelligence community had been slightly more nuanced, promoting protocols that allow for key escrow, where messages would also be encrypted under an additional key (e.g. controlled by the government). Such protocols have been promoted by intelligence agencies as recently as 2016 and early as the 1990s but were also met with fierce criticism.

More recently, there has been a new set of legislation in the UK, statements from the Five Eyes and proposals from intelligence officials that propose a “different” way of defeating end-to-end encryption, that is akin to key escrow but is enabled on a “per-warrant” basis rather than by default. Let’s look at how this may effect threat models in applications that use end-to-end encryption in the future.

Legislation

On the 31st of August 2018, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (collectively known as the “Five Eyes”) released a “Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption”, where they outlined their position on encryption.

In the statement, it says:

Privacy laws must prevent arbitrary or unlawful interference, but privacy is not absolute. It is an established principle that appropriate government authorities should be able to seek access to otherwise private information when a court or independent authority has authorized such access based on established legal standards.

The statement goes on to set out that technology companies have a mutual responsibility with government authorities to enable this process. At the end of the statement, it describes how technology companies should provide government authorities access to private information:

The Governments of the Five Eyes encourage information and communications technology service providers to voluntarily establish lawful access solutions to their products and services that they create or operate in our countries. Governments should not favor a particular technology; instead, providers may create customized solutions, tailored to their individual system architectures that are capable of meeting lawful access requirements. Such solutions can be a constructive approach to current challenges.

Should governments continue to encounter impediments to lawful access to information necessary to aid the protection of the citizens of our countries, we may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions.

Their position effectively boils down to requiring technology companies to provide a technical means to fulfil court warrants that require them to hand over private data of certain individuals, but the implementation for doing so is open to the technology company.

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Justice for victims of bank fraud – learning from the Post Office trial

In London, this week, a trial is being held over a dispute between the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA) and the Post Office, but the result will have far-reaching repercussions for anyone disputing computer evidence. The trial currently focuses on whether the legal agreements and processes set up by the Post Office are a fair basis for managing its relationship with the subpostmasters who operate branches on its behalf. Later, the court will assess whether the fact that the Post Office computer system – Horizon – indicates that a subpostmaster is in debt to the Post Office is sufficient evidence for the subpostmaster to be indeed liable to repay the debt, even when the subpostmaster claims the accounts are incorrect due to computer error or fraud.

Disputes over Horizon have led to subpostmasters being bankrupted, losing their homes, or even being jailed but these cases also echo the broader issues at the heart of the many phantom withdrawals disputes I see between a bank and its customers. Customers claim that money was taken from their accounts without their permission. The bank claims that their computer system shows that either the customer authorised the withdrawal or was grossly negligent and so the customer is liable. The customer may also claim that the bank’s handling of the dispute is poor and the contract with the bank protects the bank’s interests more than that of the customer so is an unfair basis for managing disputes.

There are several lessons the Post Office trial will have for the victims of phantom withdrawals, particularly for cases of push payment fraud, but in this post, I’m going to explore why these issues are being dealt with first in a trial initiated by subpostmasters and not by the (far more numerous) bank customers. In later posts, I’ll look more into the specific details that are being disclosed as a result of this trial.

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UK Faster Payment System Prompts Changes to Fraud Regulation

Banking transactions are rapidly moving online, offering convenience to customers and allowing banks to close branches and re-focus on marketing more profitable financial products. At the same time, new payment methods, like the UK’s Faster Payment System, make transactions irrevocable within hours, not days, and so let recipients make use of funds immediately.

However, these changes have also created a new opportunity for fraud schemes that trick victims into performing a transaction under false pretences. For example, a criminal might call a bank customer, tell them that their account has been compromised, and help them to transfer money to a supposedly safe account that is actually under the criminal’s control. Losses in the UK from this type of fraud were £145.4 million during the first half of 2018 but importantly for the public, such frauds fall outside of existing consumer protection rules, leaving the customer liable for sometimes life-changing amounts.

The human cost behind this epidemic has persuaded regulators to do more to protect customers and create incentives for banks to do a better job at preventing the fraud. These measures are coming sooner than UK Finance – the trade association for UK based banking payments and cards businesses – would like, but during questioning by the House of Commons Treasury Committee, their Chief Executive conceded that change is coming. They now focus on who will reimburse customers who have been defrauded through no fault of their own. Who picks up the bill will depend not just on how good fraud prevention measures are, but how effectively banks can demonstrate this fact.

UK Faster Payment Creates an Opportunity for Social Engineering Attacks

One factor that contributed to the new type of fraud is that online interactions lack the usual cues that help customers tell whether a bank is genuine. Criminals use sophisticated social engineering attacks that create a sense of urgency, combined with information gathered about the customer through illicit means, to convince even diligent victims that it could only be their own bank calling. These techniques, combined with the newly irrevocable payment system, create an ideal situation for criminals.

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Can Ethics Help Restore Internet Freedom and Safety?

Internet services are suffering from various maladies ranging from algorithmic bias to misinformation and online propaganda. Could computer ethics be a remedy? Mozilla’s head Mitchell Baker warns that computer science education without ethics will lead the next generation of technologists to inherit the ethical blind spots of those currently in charge. A number of leaders in the tech industry have lent their support to Mozilla’s Responsible Computer Science Challenge initiative to integrate ethics with undergraduate computer science training. There is a heightened interest in the concept of ethical by design, the idea of baking ethical principles and human values into the software development process from design to deployment.

Ethical education and awareness are important, and there exist a number of useful relevant resources. Most computer science practitioners refer to the codes of ethics and conduct provided by the field’s professional bodies such as the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and in the UK the British Computing Society and the Institute of Engineering and Technology. Computer science research is predominantly guided by the principles laid out in the Menlo Report.

But aspirations and reality often diverge, and ethical codes do not directly translate to ethical practice. Or the ethical practices of about five companies to be precise. The concentration of power among a small number of big companies means that their practices define the online experience of the majority of Internet users. I showed this amplified power in my study on the Web’s differential treatment of the users of Tor anonymity network.

Ethical code alone is not enough and needs to be complemented by suitable enforcement and reinforcement. So who will do the job? Currently, for the most part, companies themselves are the judge and jury in how their practices are regulated. This is not a great idea. The obvious misalignment of incentives is aptly captured in an Urdu proverb that means: “The horse and grass can never be friends”. Self-regulation by companies can result in inconsistent and potentially biased regulation patterns, and/or over-regulation to stay legally safe.

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Managing conflicts between ethical principles and job duties

Despite its international context, discussion of the social implications of technology is surprisingly parochial. For example, the idea that individuals should have control over how their data is used is considered radical and innovative in the US, despite it being commonly accepted in Europe since the early 1980’s. The same applies to including professional and ethical training as part of computer science curricula – while a recent move in many US institutions, it’s been mandatory for BCS accredited courses in the UK for as long as I can remember. One lesson that comes from the UK’s experience here, and that I think would be of help to institutions following its lead, is that students being aware of ethics is not enough to protect society and individuals. There needs to also be strong codes of conduct, built on ethical principles, which practitioners are expected to follow.

For most computer science practitioners in the UK, the codes of conduct of relevance are from the field’s professional bodies – BCS and IET. They say roughly what you might expect – do a good job, follow instructions, avoid conflicts of interest, and consider the public interest. I’ve always found these to be a bit unsatisfactory, treating ethical decisions as the uncontroversial product of the application of consistent rules of professional conduct. These rules however don’t help with reality, where practitioners are faced with decisions where all options come at substantial personal or financial cost, where rules are inconsistent with themselves and ethical principles, all while faced with substantial uncertainty as to the consequences of their actions.

That’s why I am pleased to see that the ACM ethical code released today goes some way to acknowledge the complex interaction between technology and society, and provides tools to help practitioners navigate the challenges. In particular it gives some guidance on a topic I have long felt sorely lacking in the BCS and IET codes – what to do when instructions from your employer conflict with the public interest. At best, the BCS and IET codes are silent on how to handle such situations – if anything the BCS code puts emphasis on acting “in accordance” with employer instructions compared to requiring that members only “have due regard” for the public interest. In contrast, the ACM code is clear “that the public good is the paramount consideration”.

The ACM code also is clear that ethical practices are the responsibility of all. Management should enact rules that require ethical practices – they “should pursue clearly defined organizational policies that are consistent with the Code and effectively communicate them to relevant stakeholders. In addition, leaders should encourage and reward compliance with those policies, and take appropriate action when policies are violated.” But also, the code puts the duty on employees, through individual or collective action, to follow ethical practices even if management has not discharged their duty – “rules that are judged unethical should be challenged”.

Courses of action discussed in the ACM code are not limited to just challenging rules, but also actively disrupting unethical practices – “consider challenging the rule through existing channels before violating the rule. A computing professional who decides to violate a rule because it is unethical, or for any other reason, must consider potential consequences and accept responsibility for that action”.

One specific example of such disruptive action is whistleblowing, which the code recognizes as a legitimate course of action in the right circumstances – “if leaders do not act to curtail or mitigate such risks, it may be necessary to ‘blow the whistle’ to reduce potential harm”. However, my one disappointment in the code is that such disclosures are restricted to being made only through the “appropriate authorities” even though such authorities are often ineffective at instituting organizational change or protecting whistleblowers.

Implementing ethical policies is not without cost, and when doing so runs against business opportunities, profit often wins. It is nevertheless helpful that the code suggests that “in cases where misuse or harm are predictable or unavoidable, the best option may be to not implement the system”. The UK banks currently saying they can’t prevent push-payment fraud, resulting in life-changing losses to their customers, would do well to consider this principle. The current situation, where customers are held liable despite taking a normal level of care, is not an ethical practice.

Overall, I think this code is helpful and I am impressed at the breadth and depth of thought that clearly went into it. The code is also timely, as practitioners are now discovering their power to disrupt unethical practices through collective action and could take advantage of being given the permission to do so. The next task will be how to support and encourage the adoption of ethical principles and counteract the powerful forces that run into conflict with their practice.

Will new UK rules reduce the harm of push-payment fraud?

On Friday’s Rip off Britain I’ll be talking about new attempts by UK banks to prevent fraud, and the upcoming scheme for reimbursing the victims. While these developments have the potential to better protect customers, the changes could equally leave customers in a more vulnerable situation than before. What will decide between these two extremes is how well designed will be the rules surrounding these new schemes.

The beginning of this story is September 2016, when the consumer association – Which? – submitted a super-complaint to the UK Payment System Regulator (PSR) regarding push payment fraud – where a customer is tricked into transferring money into a criminal’s account. Such bank transfers are known as push payments because they are initiated by the bank sending the money, as opposed to pull payments, like credit and debit cards, where it is the receiving bank that starts the process. Banks claim that since the customer was involved in the process, they “authorised” the transaction, and so under UK and EU law, the customer is not entitled to a refund. I’ve argued that this interpretation doesn’t match any reasonable definition of the word “authorised” but nevertheless the term “authorised push payment scams” seems to have stuck as the commonly used terminology for this type of fraud, I’m sure much to the banks’ delight.

The Which? super-complaint asked for banks to be held liable for such frauds, and so reimburse the victims unless the bank can demonstrate the customer has acted with gross negligence. Which? argued that this approach would protect the customers from a fraud that exists as a consequence of bank design decisions, and provides banks with both a short-term incentive to prevent frauds that they can stop, as well as a medium-to-long term incentive for the banks to enhance payment systems to be resistant to fraud. The response from the PSR was disappointing, recognising that banks should do more, but rejecting the recommendation to hold banks liable for this fraud and requesting only that the banks collect more data. Nevertheless, the data collected proved useful in understanding the scale of the problem – £236 million stolen from over 42,000 victims in 2017, with banks only being able to recover 26% of the losses. This revelation led to Parliament asking difficult questions of the PSR.

The PSR’s alternative to holding banks liable for push payment fraud is for victims to be reimbursed if they can demonstrate they have acted with an appropriate level of care and that the bank has not. The precise definition of each level of care was a subject of consultation, and will now be decided by a steering group consisting of representatives of the banking industry and consumers. In my response to this consultation, I explained my reasons for recommending that banks be liable for fraud, including that fairly deciding whether customers met a level of care is a process fraught with difficulties. This is particularly the case due to the inequality in power between a bank and its customer, and that taking a banking dispute to court is ruinously expensive for most people since the option of customers spreading the cost through collective actions was removed from the Financial Services Act. More generally, banks – as the designers of payment systems and having real-world understanding of their use – have the greatest capacity to mitigate the risks these systems introduce.

Nevertheless, if the rules for the reimbursement scheme are set up well, it would be a substantial improvement over the current situation. On the other hand, if the process is bad then it could entrench the worst of current practices. Because the PSR has decided that reimbursement should depend on compliance to a level of care, my response also included what should be the process for defining these levels, and for adjudicating disputes.

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Security code AutoFill: is this new iOS feature a security risk for online banking?

A new feature for iPhones in iOS 12 – Security Code AutoFill – is supposed to improve the usability of Two Factor Authentication but could place users at risk of falling victim to online banking fraud.

Two Factor Authentication (2FA), which is often referred to as Two Step Verification, is an essential element for many security systems, especially those online and accessed remotely. In most cases, it provides extended security by checking if the user has access to a device. In SMS-based 2FA, for example, a user registers their phone number with an online service. When this service sees a login attempt for the corresponding user account, it sends a One Time Password (OTP), e.g. four to six digits, to the registered phone number. The legitimate user then receives this code and is able to quote it during the login process, but an impersonator won’t.

In a recent development by Apple, announced at its developer conference WWDC18, they are set to automate this last step to improve user experience with 2FA with a new feature that is set to be introduced to iOS in version 12. The Security Code AutoFill feature, currently available to developers in a beta version, will allow the mobile device to scan incoming SMS messages for such codes and suggest them at the top of the default keyboard.

Description of new iOS 12 *Security Code AutoFill* feature (source: Apple)

Currently, these SMS codes rely on the user actively switching apps and memorising the code, which can take a couple of seconds. Some users deploy alternative try strategies such as memorising the code from the preview banner and hastily typing it down. Apple’s new iOS feature will require only a single tap from the user. This will make the login process faster and less error prone, a significant improvement to the usability of 2FA. It could also translate into an increased uptake of 2FA among iPhone users.

Example of *Security Code AutoFill* feature in operation on iPhone (source: Apple)

If users synchronise SMS with their MacBook or iMac, the existing Text Message Forwarding feature will push codes from their iPhone and enable Security Code AutoFill in Safari.

Example of *Security Code AutoFill* feature synchronised with macOS Mojave (source: Apple)

Reducing friction in user interaction to improve technology uptake for new users, and increase the usability and satisfaction for existing users, is not a new concept. It has not only been discussed in academia at length but is also a common goal within industry, e.g. in banking. This is evident in how the financial and payment industry has encouraged contactless (Near Field Communication – NFC) payments, which makes transactions below a certain threshold much quicker than traditional Chip and PIN payments.

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