Paym – The mobile payment service set to rule the world
By Andy Gent 29th April saw the release of a new mobile payment system, Paym, which allows users to send and receive money using just a mobile phone number. There is no need to remember account details or card numbers and to receive a payment you don’t even need a smartphone. You do, however, need a […]
Banking on mobile banking
By Dilip Mistry Mobile banking is big business. Users are set to exceed 1 billion by 2017, up from 590 million last year, a 15% representation of global subscribers. The end of this month signalled the release of Paym (more on that later), the Banking and Finance industries’ simple transfer tool that removes the need for […]
Not enough has been done to prevent voicemail fraud
by Andy Gent Despite six months of hearings, 184 witnesses, 42 written submissions and one Lord Justice Enquiry, voicemail services are still not as secure as you might expect. You may recall that Lord Justice Leveson’s enquiry into the ‘culture, practices and ethics of the press’ focused heavily on journalists who had gained access to […]
Heartbleed hits home after bug sweep
by Dilip Mistry Finnish Company Codenomicon along with Google researcher Neel Mehta have recently discovered a flaw in OpenSSL, a form of the web-based encryption technology Secure-Socket-Layer (SSL) and Transport-Layer-Security (TLS). The technology is used widely all over the Internet to encrypt sensitive personal data with a high potential for fraudulent use, such as passwords […]
Security in NFC
by Andy Gent Anti-fraud and security measures are critical requirements for NFC payment and ticketing and as such, it is important to understand the security within an NFC enabled environment. Mobile phones come equipped with a pass code that can be activated by the user. But as we have outlined in the past, some 30% […]
Day to day fraud risks
By Andy Gent An interesting article in the Daily Telegraph on cyber criminals taking a stroll around the streets of East London in order to gather sensitive information for the purposes of fraud led me to think about the generic risks of using the mobile phone in public. The article points out that a casual […]
Removing fraud from Near Field Communications
The mobile industry is famous for predictions of the next big thing which do not come true. For several years, before the introduction of touch screen smartphones, we were confidently told that ‘this will be the year of 3G’. Indeed this happened so frequently that I believe the ‘year of 3G’ actually lasted almost a […]
Mobile fraud: the China crisis
By Dilip Mistry The BBC recently published a story on the growth of China as a hub for cyber-criminal activity and mobile fraud. Amongst the various scams outlined, originally from a Trend Micro report called The Mobile Cyber Criminal Underground Market in China, were the ability to send bulk spam text messages at a rate […]
Spanish police arrest another “most wanted” mobile fraudster
By Andy Gent Back in November we wrote about two phone hackers making the FBI’s Most Wanted list for cyber-crime. It seems that Farhan Arshad and Noor Aziz Uddin were not the only phone fraud criminals that were under the watchful eye of the US Government with the news this week that Juegers Veloz has […]
Unintended consequences
by Mark Yelland Apple repays parents $32.5 million in in-app purchases At first glance, there seems to be nothing untoward about the settlement, and many are likely to see it as a reasonable decision – although it did not go to court and so no legal precedent has been set. For telecoms fraud professionals, the […]