[Dave Birch] Who has stolen the most money through the fraudulent use of Oyster cards recently? The brainbox super-hackers from the Netherlands who reverse-engineered a smart card chip in order to create cloned Oyster cards that can be used for a day, or Transport for London staff? Well, risk analysis would tell you that it’s odds-on to be the later. And sure enough…

A former Transport for London employee has been banged up for nine months after conning £18,000 out of the Oyster card system.

[From www.thelondondailynews.com]

Her master plan? Liquid nitrogen and micro-lathes? No. She worked in the ticket office and gave her mates cards with two grand pre-loaded! It’s important to do the risk analysis for payments systems properly (ie, systematically) and keep the pathological cases in context. Insiders are always a problem when it comes to designing secure payment schemes, but the need for proper risk analysis is even greater now that there are many different kinds of insider to consider: it’s no longer simply bank employees and retail staff, but telco employees, outsourcer and call centre staff, bureau staff and more.

The former Mayor of London, “Red” Ken Livingstone, had great vision for Oyster, particularly after the 2012 Olympics:

“Today we are marvelling at the multiple possibilities of Oyster, but come back here in five or 10 years’ time and we will have chips inserted under our skin or inside our heads,” he said.

[From From the newsdesk- a blog from computing.co.uk]

No comment!

These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]

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