Author: Lishoy Francis

Lishoy Francis is a Senior Consultant at Consult Hyperion. He specialises in NFC/RFID, Secure Elements - (U)SIM and embedded UICC, Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), standards, and applied cryptography. He is currently managing Consult Hyperion’s Information Security activities within a number of North American and UK banks, for whom he has designed and implemented application security frameworks and security protocols; evaluated the security design of their mobile applications, performed security tests, and reported any security related findings to the customer. He leads Consult Hyperion’s security testing (penetration testing) practice and is responsible for managing a team of ethical hackers who are focused on testing mobile banking and wallet applications prior to commercial release. He has been acknowledged by Research in Motion (RIM) for finding a security issue in their NFC API and has authored over 14 publications in peer-reviewed international journals, security conferences, and workshops. He is a named inventor of several security techniques and technologies.

Be on the smart side of the Great Reset

14th December 202110th February 2022by Lishoy FrancisLeave a comment

The human society is now at crossroads – demanding changes in our lifestyle, health choices, economics, and civil liberties. These changes are accelerated by climate change, political response to the pandemic, the need for racial and gender equality, human migration, and of course, a few break-through technologies such as digital automation, data analytics, and machine-learning (AI). So where are we heading? The call for “Great Reset” has been reverberating since the past few years and is now getting louder and louder. This was the topic of the virtual fireside chat by two visionaries on our Tomorrow’s Transactions webinar, Brett King and Dave Birch, discussing the societal and technological changes that are foreseen in the next few decades. This conversation was centered around Brett King’s (Richard Petty, co-author) book, “The Rise of Technosocialism” and aligns with Consult Hyperion’s engagement with think tanks on global issues. Our aim to is separate foresight and facts from fiction in trying to understand the trends in the market that our clients should watch-out for especially in payments, banking, transit, digital identity, and information security.

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Are 97% of mobile transactions in Asia fraudulent?

7th December 20207th December 2020by Lishoy FrancisLeave a comment

Recently I saw this article suggesting that 97% of mobile transactions in Asia are fraudulent? Can this really be true? I decided to investigate.

The article highlights an excellent report published by Secure-D looking into mobile ad fraud, which it appears is a largely hidden multi-billion dollar enterprise, impacting emerging markets in particular. As you might expect with an enterprise of this size it is multi-faceted and complex. Two of the ways fraudsters are making money are as follows:

Fake clicks: The internet runs on advertising revenues obtained when a user clicks on an ad in a mobile app or on a web page. Fraudsters have numerous ways to create fake clicks, that look like they’ve come from a real person, and then be paid the associate fee. One way that they do this is by deploying malicious apps to the devices of unsuspecting users often disguised as a legitimate app offering an innocuous service like providing weather information.
Hidden purchases: Many mobile users in emerging markets are unbanked and use their prepaid mobile airtime to purchase goods or services. Those malicious apps deployed to devices can also then siphon off funds from users without them realising it is happening. They just see their airtime running out more quickly than it otherwise might.

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Is your mobile banking app exposed by someone else’s software?

14th July 202027th August 2020by Lishoy Francis1 Comment

This post was written in collaboration with Neal Michie, Director, Product Management, Verimatrix.

Banks are facing massive disruption and change from many directions. The rise of app-only banks has made the need for traditional banks to have compelling app services an imperative. Banks have of course been building mobile apps for several years. If not already, they will soon be the most important channel for engaging with and serving customers. However, mobile banking apps will also become the primary focus of hackers, intent on getting access to other people’s information and money.

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