Wouldn't it be interesting if a bank would propose a holistic solution
to phishing by:
-placing all of their login widgets (and as many banks who shall remain
nameless still use SSN and PIN for the default user authentication
credentials... personal and confidential information) within an
SSL-enforced container on their site,
-providing a usb cert key (media choice due to near-universal support
and acceptance) or smart card for client auth/non-repudiation,
-anti-virus, email spam filter, personal pc firewall,
-malware/trojan checker (specifically for browers), and finally
-a User Guide with a BIG SECTION on information security and Internet
threats (to address our common observations about lacking consumer
education).
What if they didn't even force these on their customers, but offered it
as a 'value-added' or "Premium Online Banking" service for a small fee?
I for one would buy it and I'm sure others would too. Believe it or
not, one of the big online banking sites had just such a proposal
already drawn up and ready for delivery but it was shot down by
Marketing, Mgmt and other non-technical wingnuts (they'd rather just
reimburse customers for any fraud encountered). I wonder if some other
forward-thinking eCommerce leader out there has the political clout and
cleverness to propose such a solution. If so please let me know because
I will change my bank to yours immediately.
Best regards,
-mf
Rogan Dawes wrote:
And then there are other issues, like which smartcard + pki +
message format must be supported by the PC, OS, and user's
software. And do all these factors interoperate smoothly with all
the other software a banking customer
may have.
Finally, there is the need to re-authenicate ever customer in order
to issue a new identifier in the form of the card.
So long as the smartcard supports PKCS#11, there should be no
problem interacting with it.
The PKI software chosen by the bank should be irrelevant, as it
still produces certificates in the standard X.509 formats.
The selected CA, cert issuing process, extensions and or cert
constrainst
fields, CA policy statement and the fields/structure in the messages
generally give all the PKCS 11 and X.509 a strong flavour of
'proprietary'
implmentations.
PKCS#11 is not subject to proprietary flavours, to the best of my
knowledge. This means that a customer that has a card reader that
supports PKCS#11 can interact with standards supporting browsers such
as IE and Firefox to access the certificates stored on their smart cards.
Sure X.509 has a number of optional fields that may or may not be used
by a particular implementation of PKI. But please see below for an
explanation of why this doesn't matter.
Worse, many CA approachs will provide an assertion about a person (lyal
collins) not theat person's accounts, or conversely, with accounts.
In the
former case, I have to register my cert with each account I have with
each
(so the banks can update their account profiles with my cert details)
while
the latter case means a new cert for each account I have.
If this isn't a case of inplementing new 1:1 security relationships
just to
replaice existing solutions with new technology, without saving costs, I
don't know what is.
There are a couple of ways of approaching this: Either have different
smart-cards per bank, and the bank manages their own cards/certs
entirely, or let the user have a smart card, and the bank only manages
a private/public key pair on the smart card.
Either way, the bank is still in control of the issuing process. Note
that I have never suggested that you should have only a single private
key and certificate, that all banks use to identify you. Absolutely,
each bank will want to control the certificates that they recognise,
and allow to access their systems.
The main thing that I think you missed here is that you CAN store
multiple key pairs on a single smart card. But I think that more
likely, and more feasible from a management perspective, is that banks
will issue their own smart card. That way, if you lose a single card,
you do not lose all your identities at once.
In another email sent to this list, I proposed that banks make use of
the smart card facilities available on many credit and debit cards
already in the field, by allowing customers to use those to
authenticate to their internet banking services. Maybe you should read
that email for a better understanding of how I am thinking . . .
Message format can be specified by the online application, as it
does not have to interact with anyone else, other than that single
online application.
This = proprietary solutuion., What about my other financial/bank
relationships?
Why should they have to interact with each other via the Internet?
They already have existing relationships set up via SWIFT, etc . . .
If each bank has their own certificate, they are at complete liberty
to use them as they choose . . .
Technically, a good idea. Practically, and commercially,
very hard and
expensive to do. Requiring every on-line banking customer
to buy a new
computer in order to use on-line banking is probably worse
than giving
customers a new computer, something that does happen for high worth
individuals in a few rare cases.
I'm not suggesting for a second that people will HAVE to buy a new
computer. You can buy a smart-card reader for les than USD30. No
need for a new computer, if you already have one.
Smartcard readers are like sterilising bullets - the benefit (germ
free) is
far outweighed by other effects (the bullet kills you).
I call bull on this. A number of banks already offer customers the
option of using smart cards. I fail to see how adding a smart card
reader to an existing PC has negative side effects?
Old PC's can use serial or parallel readers, more recent PC's can use
USB readers. Still NEWER machines can use integrated card readers.
Where's the downside?
My point was that IF manufacturers start shipping computers with a
smart-card reader already part of the PC, and with drivers already
installed as part of the OS installation, then we start approaching
the "zero-setup" that was originally posited as the "Holy Grail".
We can but hope - one day, Oh one day
Indeed. That's what this discussion is about. Trying to get (just a
little) closer to that day . . .
Lyal
Rogan
