[Gllug] natwest fantasticness

[Robert McKay]

> > >    Its like this new Chip and Pin. If thats more secure than a personal 
> > > thing like a signiture then I'm not a computer programmer. In this age 
> > > where we think seriously of using a 128 bit encription the creditcard 
> > > company go and use a 10bit key! Rather than a much large key that they 
> > > were using before ie somones signiture. 
> > 
> > Really?  How often does anybody check your signature?  One time in 50 if
> > you're lucky.
> 
> Too right.  *ANYTHING* is more secure than a signature.
> 
> doug.

Perhaps they could use automatic signature recognition. That might be
much more secure than a pin number (that can easilly be stolen by a
shopkeeper with a modified pinbad -- or just by someone looking over
your shoulder) and would at least leave an audit trail that could be
examined in the event of fraud. Also I suspect that the hash of the pin
may still be stored on the magnetic strip meaning you could trivially
swipe a stolen card through a magstrip reader, get the hash and then
brute-force it on a PC in a couple of minutes.

If that is indeed the case then I'd say the new system is materially 
less secure than the old one.

-Rob
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