Counterfeit

If only I had $1 for every time I've heard someone tell me the benefits of barefoot running over the last 2-3 years.

As with many forms of exercise, dieting and anything health related, fads come and while it's questionable whether people end up healthier because of the fads, someone surely makes money on them.

Enter: barefoot running. A sport that would bring us back to the early days of running.... The really early days!

Regardless of whether this sport boasts medical or clinical backing (for more info on that, check out Nature: Journal of Science or the slightly more palatable read Harvard Science), a new fad backed by accolades in a bestseller means:

• a surge of interest right at the beginning
• this interest may outpace legitimate supply leaving room for new suppliers
• uneducated buyers, ones that have just heard about this new fad and are not yet aware of the right resources for info and authentic products
• the possibility of longer term high sales.

Barefoot shoes try to outrace the black market
CNN Money - August 13, 2010: 5:25 AM ET
Suddenly, you run smack into one of the perils of innovation: you've created such a heavy demand that someone else is trying to take advantage of it. In other words, you've attracted counterfeiters. They're everywhere.

So what can a company do when they are new to the market and encounter counterfeiting?

Barefoot shoes try to outrace the black market
CNN Money - August 13, 2010: 5:25 AM ET
"It's like Whack-a-Mole," Shaw says. "It's become a really huge problem, taking a lot of our time and energy."

Here's what Vibram FiveFingers did:

• With more than 200 fake Vibram websites appearing online, Vibram solicited the help of Google to shut the sham sites down
• Vibram used the World Intellectual Property organization and lawyers to help take down the sham sites, often at a cost in excess of $2,500 per site
• The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition can be used as a resource
• Vibram hired an investigator in China to sniff out factories making the counterfeit shoes
• But likely their single biggest success has been devoted fans blogging about the counterfeits, creating customer awareness.

Check out the full CNN Money article.

Technorati Tags: Counterfeit Fraud Prevention

It was literally the night before this article came out that my friends and I were discussing the effects of the transitions from mag stripe credit cards to the infamous and highly touted chip cards.

My friends (a bunch of brilliant code monkeys--commonly referred to as geeks... although one would rather think of himself as a rapping gangster...) touted the high degree of encryption and the exponentially greater amount of data able to be stored on the chip.

Impervious due to its new encryption?, questioned one.

But of course, nothing is forever secure, remarked the other. Eventually someone will break it. But how.... If the encryption was so strong?

Much like Houdini, or the spies of the Cold War, the answer was there in front of us the whole time.... We just couldn't see it.

That is, we were focusing on the strength of the encryption while someone else took advantage of a split-second transmission of data off the chip--whether or not to verify the transaction via PIN.

Check out the rest of the article to learn how Python was used to hack 'Chip and PIN'.

SECURITY THREATS TOOLKIT: Chip and PIN is broken, say researchers
ZDNet - February 11, 2010, 17:01 GMT
Chip-and-PIN readers can be tricked into accepting transactions without a valid personal identification number, opening the door to fraud, researchers have found.
Researchers at Cambridge University have found a fundamental flaw in the EMV -- Europay, MasterCard, Visa -- protocol that underlies chip-and-PIN validation for debit and credit cards.

As a consequence, a device can be created to modify and intercept communications between a card and a point-of-sale terminal, and fool the terminal into accepting that a PIN verification has succeeded.

"Chip and PIN is fundamentally broken," Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University told ZDNet UK. "Banks and merchants rely on the words 'Verified by PIN' on receipts, but they don't mean anything."

The researchers conducted an attack that succeeded in tricking a card reader into authenticating a transaction, even though no valid PIN was entered. In a later test, they managed to authenticate transactions, without the correct PIN, with valid cards from six different card issuers. Those issuers were Barclaycard, Co-operative Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, HSBC and John Lewis.

Continue to the rest of the ZDNet article.

Technorati Tags: Counterfeit Credit Card Fraud Hacking

I blogged about Nigerian letter scams about 2 years ago. At the time, I wondered whether it was worth posting such a story as I thought everyone, or at least most Canadians, were already aware of these types of scams and that few of us would continue to fall prey.

Wonders never cease to amaze!

We could sit back and wonder in amazement at how "those people" being touched by these crimes are not using their noodle but in an economic downturn, these stats are not that surprising.

With less certainty in the market, those seeking to make a profit can become desperate and often resort to either breaking the rules, or operating within a grey area between right and wrong. This has become a popular news topic as the economy in the US and that in Canada have suffered a departure from the climb we have seen for many years.

As unemployment rates climb and we hear of our friends who have lost jobs, we hear of those genuinely trying to help those in need. As genuine as the intent to help is, the recipient is not always an honest individual.

Canadians keep falling for Nigerian letter scam, experts say recession a factor
The Canadian Press - Saturday, July 4, 2009 11:24am

Fraud artists are finding it easier amid a battered economy to entrap marks with dubious offers once easily dismissed as scams, and are snaring a growing number of victims to the tune of millions of dollars a month, experts say.

The Competition Bureau is warning that recessions are "boom times for scammers" and predicts desperate Canadians will fall into traps offering easy cash online, by phone and mail.

Statistics provided by Phonebusters - the Canadian anti-fraud call centre run by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Competition Bureau and Ontario Provincial Police - show Canadians are increasingly falling prey to scams of all types.

"Fraud does tend to increase in economic downturns," said Ian Nielsen-Jones, the Competition Bureau's assistant deputy commissioner.
Vulnerable people sometimes lower their defences and make bad decisions as times get tough, while others on the borderline of lawful society turn to crime, Nielsen-Jones said.

Scams involving promises of employment are on the rise, while other ploys that had virtually disappeared because the public had gotten wise to the ruse are now making a comeback, he added. [...]

Continue to the rest of the Canadian Press article.

Technorati Tags: Canada Counterfeit Fraud Prevention Identity Theft