Public policy

Confirmation of Payee is coming, but will it protect bank customers from fraud?

The Payment System Regulator (PSR) has just announced that the UK’s six largest banks must check whether the name of the recipient of a transfer matches what the sender thinks. This new feature should help address a security loophole in online payments: the name of the recipient of transfers is ignored, contrary to expectations and unlike cheques. This improved security should make some fraud more difficult, but banks must be prevented from exploiting the change to unfairly shift the liability of the remaining crime to the victims.

The PSR’s target is for checks to be fully implemented by March 2020, somewhat later than their initial promise to Parliament of September 2018 and subsequent target of July 2019. The new proposal, known as Confirmation of Payee, also only covers the six largest banking groups, but this should cover 90% of transfers. Its goal is to defend against criminals who trick victims into transferring funds under the false pretence that the money is going to the victim’s new account, whereas it is really going to the criminal. The losses from such fraud, known as push payment scams, are often life-changing, resulting in misery for the victims.

Checks on the recipient name will make this particular scam harder, so while unlikely to prevent all types of push payment scams they will hopefully force criminals to adopt strategies that are easier to prevent. The risk that consumer representatives and regulators will need to watch out for is that these new security measures could result in victims being unfairly held liable. This scenario is, unfortunately, likely because the voluntary consumer protection code for push payment scams excuses the bank from liability if they show the customer a Confirmation of Payee warning.

Warning fatigue and misaligned incentives

In my response to the consultation over this consumer protection code, I raised the issue of “warning fatigue” – that customers will be shown many irrelevant warnings while they do online banking and this reduces the likelihood that customers will notice important ones. Even Confirmation of Payee warnings will frequently be wrong, such as if the recipient’s bank account is under a different name to what the sender expects. If the two names are very dissimilar, the sender won’t be given more details but if the name entered is close to the name in bank records the sender should be told what the correct one is and asked to compare.

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Will dispute resolution be Libra’s Achilles’ heel?

Facebook’s new cryptocurrency, Libra, has the ambitious goal of being the “financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people”. This aspiration will only be achievable if the user-experience (UX) of Libra and associated technologies is competitive with existing payment channels. Now, Facebook has an excellent track record of building high-quality websites and mobile applications, but good UX goes further than just having an aesthetically pleasing and fast user interface. We can already see aspects of Libra’s design that will have consequences on the experience of its users making payments.

For example, the basket of assets that underly the Libra currency should ensure that its value should not be too volatile in terms of the currencies represented within the reserve, so easing international payments. However, Libra’s value will fluctuate against every other currency, creating a challenge for domestic payments. People won’t be paid their salary in Libra any time soon, nor will rents be denominated in Libra. If the public is expected to hold significant value in Libra, fluctuations in the currency markets could make the difference between someone being able to pay their rent or not – a certainly unwelcome user experience.

Whether the public will consider the advantages of Libra are worth the exposure to the foibles of market fluctuations is an open question, but in this post, I’m mostly going to discuss the consequences another design decision baked into the design of Libra: that transactions are irrevocable. Once a transaction is accepted by the validator network, the user may proceed “knowing that the transaction can never be changed or reversed“. This is a common design decision within cryptocurrencies because it ensures that companies, governments and regulators should be unable to revoke payments they dislike. When coupled with anonymity or decentralisation, to prevent blacklisted transactions being blocked beforehand, irrevocability creates a censorship-resistant payment system.

Mitigating the cost of irrevocable transactions

Libra isn’t decentralised, nor is it anonymous, so it is unlikely to be particularly resistant to censorship over matters when there is an international consensus. Irrevocability does, however, make fraud easier because once stolen funds are gone, they cannot be reinstated, even if the fraud is identified. Other cryptocurrencies share Libra’s irrevocability (at least in theory), but they are designed for technically sophisticated users, and their risk of theft can be balanced against the potentially substantial gains (and losses) that can be made from volatile cryptocurrencies. While irrevocability is common within cryptocurrencies, it is not within the broader payments industry. Exposing billions of people to the risk of their Libra holdings being stolen, without the potential for recourse, isn’t good UX. I’ve argued that irrevocable transactions protect the interests of financial institutions over those of the public, and are the wrong default for payments. Eventually, public pressure and regulatory intervention forced UK banks to revoke fraudulent transactions, and they take on the risk that they are unable to do so, rather than pass it onto the victims. The same argument applies to Libra, and if fraud becomes common, they will see the same pressures as UK banks.

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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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How Accidental Data Breaches can be Facilitated by Windows 10 and macOS Mojave

Inadequate user interface designs in Windows 10 and macOS Mojave can cause accidental data breaches through inconsistent language, insecure default options, and unclear or incomprehensible information. Users could accidentally leak sensitive personal data. Data controllers in companies might be unknowingly non-compliant with the GDPR’s legal obligations for data erasure.

At the upcoming Annual Privacy Forum 2019 in Rome, I will be presenting the results of a recent study conducted with my colleague Mark Warner, exploring the inadequate design of user interfaces (UI) as a contributing factor in accidental data breaches from USB memory sticks. The paper titled “Fight to be Forgotten: Exploring the Efficacy of Data Erasure in Popular Operating Systems” will be published in the conference proceedings at a later date but the accepted version is available now.

Privacy and security risks from decommissioned memory chips

The process of decommissioning memory chips (e.g. USB sticks, hard drives, and memory cards) can create risks for data protection. Researchers have repeatedly found sensitive data on devices they acquired from second-hand markets. Sometimes this data was from the previous owners, other times from third persons. In some cases, highly sensitive data from vulnerable people were found, e.g. Jones et al. found videos of children at a high school in the UK on a second-hand USB stick.

Data found this way had frequently been deleted but not erased, creating the risk that any tech-savvy future owner could access it using legally available, free to download software (e.g., FTK Imager Lite 3.4.3.3). Findings from these studies also indicate the previous owners’ intentions to erase these files and prevent future access by unauthorised individuals, and their failure to sufficiently do so. Moreover, these risks likely extend from the second-hand market to recycled memory chips – a practice encouraged under Directive 2012/19/EU on ‘waste electrical and electronic equipment’.

The implications for data security and data protection are substantial. End-users and companies alike could accidentally cause breaches of sensitive personal data of themselves or their customers. The protection of personal data is enshrined in Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) lays down rules and regulation for the protection of this fundamental right. For example, data processors could find themselves inadvertently in violation of Article 17 GDPR Right to Erasure (‘right to be forgotten’) despite their best intentions if they failed to erase a customer’s personal data – independent of whether that data was breached or not.

Seemingly minor design choices, the potential for major implications

The indication that people might fail to properly erase files from storage, despite their apparent intention to do so, is a strong sign of system failure. We know since more than twenty years that unintentional failure of users at a task “is often caused by the way in which [these] mechanisms are implemented, and users’ lack of knowledge”. In our case, these mechanisms are – for most users – the UI of Windows and macOS. When investigating these mechanisms, we found seemingly minor design choices that might facilitate unintentional data breaches. A few examples are shown below and are expanded upon in the full publication of our work.

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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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UCL runs a digital security training event aimed at domestic abuse support services

In late November, UCL’s “Gender and IoT” (G-IoT) research team ran a “CryptoParty” (digital security training event) followed by a panel discussion which brought together frontline workers, support organisations, as well as policy and tech representatives to discuss the risk of emerging technologies for domestic violence and abuse. The event coincided with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, taking place annually on the 25th of November.

Technologies such as smartphones or platforms such as social media websites and apps are increasingly used as tools for harassment and stalking. Adding to the existing challenges and complexities are evolving “smart”, Internet-connected devices that are progressively populating public and private spaces. These systems, due to their functionalities, create further opportunities to monitor, control, and coerce individuals. The G-IoT project is studying the implications of IoT-facilitated “tech abuse” for victims and survivors of domestic violence and abuse.

CryptoParty

The evening represented an opportunity for frontline workers and support organisations to upskill in digital security. Attendees had the chance to learn about various topics including phone, communication, Internet browser and data security. They were trained by a group of so-called “crypto angels”, meaning volunteers who provide technical guidance and support. Many of the trainers are affiliated with the global “CryptoParty” movement and the CryptoParty London specifically, as well as Privacy International, and the National Cyber Security Centre.

G-IoT’s lead researcher, Dr Leonie Tanczer, highlighted the importance of this event in light of the socio-technical research that the team pursued so far: “Since January 2018, we worked closely with the statutory and voluntary support sector. We identified various shortcomings in the delivery of tech abuse provisions, including practice-oriented, policy, and technical limitations. We set up the CryptoParty to bring together different communities to holistically tackle tech abuse and increase the technical security awareness of the support sector.”

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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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