CYBR650-Week 8 Blog - Dooley

CYBR650 – Week 8 Blog – Dooley

November 14, 2014

            I was watching Good Morning America yesterday morning while getting ready for work and they had a quick teaser about cybersecurity and protecting yourself and they would be right back with Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec.  They had my attention.  First, because of the “cybersecurity” mention and secondly because of Robert’s name dropping.  If you don’t watch Shark Tank then you miss the blurb about Robert being the son of Croatian immigrants and his ability to make money in the IT sector and his current company, The Herjavec Group, a leading IT security and infrastructure integration firm.

            So, I sat there taking my time to get ready for work so I could see what they were talking about.  What I saw was frightening.  We are all aware of the iWatch and that you will have the ability to pay for purchases somehow using the watch.

            Well, apparently our beloved credit card companies, I say with a laugh, will be embedding our credit cards in the near future with smart chips.  By the end of next year 70% of all credit cards are expected to have this smart chip.  While our credit card providers are hocking these as an extra layer of security and more convenient because all you have to do is wave your card in front of a payment machine instead of swipe it, there are dangers to these smart chips.

            Mr. Herjavec showed us that hackers already have an app to get your PI from the smart chips.  They did not say what the app is called, but Robert had it and the Interviewer laid her purse down, with a card with a smart chip on it, and Robert simply put his phone by her purse.  In a matter of seconds the app downloaded the interviewer’s credit card number, PIN number, and her previous transactions right onto Robert’s smart phone.

            So, how can we protect ourselves?  These hackers are not after the “big dollars”.  They are making multiple, smaller charges to go unnoticed.  You have to start reading your credit card statement line by line.  The bad guys aren’t going to go spend $5,000 item, they are going to spend $20 or $100 here and there ~ these are called microcharges, which are referred to as microfraud. 

            The Electronics Payment Coalition says the financial services industry says it is committed to investing in a system that protects millions of Americans who use it each day.  However, if you don’t believe that spiel, what else can you do to protect yourself?  There are wallets out there with metal coating that would prevent the want-to-be thieves from absconding with your information.  Robert also suggested putting your credit cards in some type of metal sleeve, or simply wrapping them in aluminum foil, can protect you from hackers getting this information.

            This technology is not going away; in fact, it will probably become more widely used.  As our cards become smarter, they contain more data, which is exactly what the bad guys want.  The more data they can gather, the more information they have and the more they can steal.

            This growing trend of smarter cards is definitely a security issue and something we all need to be aware of.  I’m even wondering if I will be able to call my card issues and ask for a “dummy” card instead of a “smart” card.  Seems like the “smart” cards are going to be far more trouble than they are worth.