Friday, 29. November 1996
ATMs zapped
Last week I was unable to use my cash card to pay for my groceries at the local grocery store because the system wasn't working. The November 28, 1996 business section of the Albuquerque Tribune explained why:
"ATMs zapped: First Security's Albuquerque-area automated teller machines and electronic funds-transfer stations at Smith's Food & Drug Stores went on the blink last weekend when a new cellular-telephone company started service using a microwave frequency that bled over to First Security's ATM and EFT frequency. Service disruptions forced Smith's to shun electronic purchases Saturday through Monday. "We apologize to our customers who were inconvenienced and are working hard to fix the problem, but the problem of jammed frequencies is just going to get worse," said Paul Bouschelle, executive vice president for First Security Bank of New Mexico."
Two obvious RISKs revealed by this incident:
1. The unintended and unexpected problems caused by bringing a new system on-line. For whatever reasons, this problem took the whole weekend to resolve.
2. This article also reveals that the ATMs and EFT terminals communicate over microwave frequencies, and are thus subject to being tapped or monitored, perhaps more easily than if they were connected via wire or telephone lines. I guess I've assumed that most of these terminals were handled via phone line, which seems inherently more secure than a radio link. This may not be true. I don't recall much discussion in this group of the risks of using radio links vs. wire for financial data transfer.
Bruce E. Wampler, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science,
University of New Mexico wampler@cs.unm.edu http://www.cs.unm.edu/~wampler [wampler@cs.unm.edu via risks-digest Volume 18, Issue 64]
E-mail solicitation on the rise
I'm sure we're all increasingly aware of annoying unsolicited commercial e-mail messages forced into our electronic inboxes. But is this just the tip of the iceberg?
A mass mailing recently ended up in my e-mail, promising e-mail marketing to 100,000 or 1,000,000 people for $195 or $995 respectively. Ominously, the message did not have a valid "From:" address in the header, and was passed through at least two servers before being distributed to an undisclosed list of recipients. Does a $100 InterNIC registration and $15/month ISP charge now give anyone the ability to saturate the Internet community with unsolicited e-mail?
Besides carefully screening incoming e-mail, what recourse does one have against acts of e-mail terrorism? With many SMTP e-mail servers readily accepting mail from anonymous senders, how can we stop the constant stream of unsolicited commercial e-mail being forced down our throats? This trend gravely concerns me, as it should concern us all!
Scott Savett, Graduate Student in Analytical Chemistry, Clemson University
Webmaster, National Collegiate EMS Foundation http://www.ncemsf.org/ ["Scott C. Savett" <ssavett@CLEMSON.EDU> via risks-digest Volume 18, Issue 64]
disLEXia, a research project by Maximillian Dornseif
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