From the 10 Years Ago Today Department
From the L0pht Archives:
Weld Pond and Cult of the Dead Cow to be Featured on Dateline NBC
9.30.1999
The lack of client side security for internet transactions poses a huge
security risk that online banks and others just seem to ignore. Tools such
as BO2K and even simpler keystroke loggers can cut through the
authentication used for “secure” web transactions to allow an attacker to
authenticate as the hapless consumer.Dateline explores this problem on Sunday October 3rd at 7pm EST. Watch
Cult of the Dead Cow demonstrate the attack and Weld Pond from the
L0pht talk about whatis really going on.
It is shocking how little has fundementally changed in the way consumers perform high value banking transactions over the web. Looking back with 10 years hindsight I have a slightly different way of describing the situation. Banks assume the network is compromised so they use end to end encryption. Banks don’t assume the endpoint is compromised so there is no security protection. In 2009 what is more likely, that your upstream is compromised or the endpoint is compromised? I would say for the average internet user the endpoint is more likely to be compromised.
Has the endpoint water slowly come to a boil and we are happy frogs slowly getting cooked?
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Written by: Chris Wysopal




