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Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by loceng on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:09AM (#39248982)
Could you elucidate how exactly "standard crypto" would stop such a thing?
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by sargun on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:15AM (#39249013)
I think the poster meant the prior meaning of the word 'crypto' -- cryptography, in which the CFO could sign and encrypt some message and then the message's authenticity could be verified.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by computerfriend on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:34AM (#39249117)
This is a current, not prior, meaning of the word.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by subtra3t on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:32PM (#39252948)
I think many people would expand the word crypto to cryptocurrency and not cryptography. We can argue on and on about which is the "correct" expansion but in my opinion a word's current meaning should be the most popular association people have of it.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by MeImCounting on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:59PM (#39255809)
Only on HN do I see people saying crypto actually mean like bitcoin or whatever. The rest of the technical world still knows crypto as cryptography.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by subtra3t on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:26AM (#39257989)
Only on HN do I find people who actually know what cryptography is. Almost all the people I know have never heard of it, but all of them have heard of bitcoin, and most have heard the word crypto being used with reference to cryptocurrencies.

That's not to say that my experience somehow means more than yours or is more valid. But I personally think my experience is more representative of the average layperson. You're welcome to disagree.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by MeImCounting on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:45AM (#39258074)
Sure the non technical world is (sadly) more familiar with Bitcoin.

I specifically said the technical world. Most people I know are technical to some degree and almost all of them would assume cryptography when they hear the word "crypto".

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by YetAnotherNick on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:26AM (#39249065)
How does crypto add anything that just verifying email ID/phone number doens't provide. If you solution is to whitelist some certificates or key, you can as easily or even easier whitelist email IDs/phone number.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by pastage on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:46AM (#39249175)
Cryptography can and should be done on hardware tokens that should directly be reported as stolen. A video call with email/phone is easy to fake.

I work with people who all have hardware crypto, you are right that we do not have the organizational knowledge to verify everything with crypto. Even if the tech is 60% there.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by YetAnotherNick on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:34AM (#39249460)
Most company only allows logging in email in work devices, which is as easy to report stolen.

What other kind of verification are we talking about which standard email DKIM doesn't have.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by acdha on Sunday February 04, 2024 @09:35AM (#39250481)
Email means I got access to your device or something you’ve configured to be able to send email, which is probably a lot of servers unless you have an entire domain dedicated to financial messages everyone knows not to trust any other domains.

A message signature means I got you to do something like tap a Yubikey and enter a PIN, touch a fingerprint sensor, etc. That can still be socially engineered, of course, but it can’t happen by accident and you could add some safeguards against routine by having a dedicated “major transactions” key used only for that purpose to add a physical speed bump.

The problem is that “ignore my gmail, I list my phone” will defeat that training more often than we’d like, so you really need to have process safeguards which make it a requirement and management backing to say even the CEO will follow the lost device process rather than asking someone to bypass process, and that has to be so carefully enshrined that nobody questions whether their job is on the line if they tell the real CFO that they can’t bypass the process.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by YetAnotherNick on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @01:27AM (#39271410)
> Yubikey and enter a PIN, touch a fingerprint sensor, etc

Laptops and mobiles have all the same sensors. Most big companies have organization wide password, fingerprint and auto screen turn off requirement. Obviously not all companies follows good security practices or doesn't give secure devices(with sensors and encryption), but if that is the case Yubikey isn't going to save them.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by ghaff on Sunday February 04, 2024 @10:06AM (#39250720)
I expect that most work emails are accessed from personally-owned phones.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by sverhagen on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:45AM (#39249174)
Banks certainly don't trust email, that's why instead they make you use those "encrypted messages" portals (...from hell).
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by macrolime on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:02AM (#39249276)
Phone numbers are trivial to spoof or steal and there is currently no way to protect against that.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by YetAnotherNick on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:29AM (#39249436)
Care to explain how can I spoof other's phone number. Also phone is as hard to steal as any device where key is stored. In fact, people will remember their phone is stolen much before than the usb key or laptop or anything else.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by p_l on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:35AM (#39249468)
If you can get S7 link with Telco, in most cases it's trivial to spoof Caller ID signals, as those are essentially forwarded from originating network. Getting direct S7 link isn't as hard as it sounds, it's IIRC common thing if yo want to run VOIP provider.

Your telco's NOC can at best track what "port of entry" the call came from but can't force the Caller ID go be truthful.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by xur17 on Sunday February 04, 2024 @08:19AM (#39249966)
I imagine it has changed, but 10-ish years ago I recall having a cheap VoIP account that just let me enter whatever phone number I wanted as the caller ID.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by p_l on Sunday February 04, 2024 @09:38AM (#39250502)
It's very much a "honor system". If VoIP provider doesn't do due diligence, the other networks can't really check the value, especially since number porting became norm
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by MichaelZuo on Sunday February 04, 2024 @10:44AM (#39251107)
For the first few dozen times sure, but after the hundredth or so report of a scam call associated with a spoofed number, the VoIP provider should be blocked by the telco. That is if they were allowed to do so.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by p_l on Sunday February 04, 2024 @12:41PM (#39252424)
"should" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement :)
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by xorcist on Sunday February 04, 2024 @12:20PM (#39252189)
There is an authentication between your phone and your telco, but there is no authentication between your telco and others. Any telco in the world (and there are many) or someone who has bribed (or hacked) someone who works there can say "this phone is now roaming our network" and traffic gets routed there.

These things are usually discovered but not before a call or sms goes through. There are also other possibilities such as diverting calls available to someone with the right access to the signalling network. Anything that's unauthenticated and unencrypted should be regarded as insecure, really.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by HeatrayEnjoyer on Sunday February 04, 2024 @02:59PM (#39253783)
If it's authenticated how can one telco sign a call with the key of another telco?
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by wolfgang42 on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:16PM (#39255089)
There is (or was) no authentication within the core of the public switched telephone network, since it was designed at a time when that was impractical and physical infrastructure was assumed to be reasonably secure. So you don’t need to fake signing, you just say “Hey, +1-555-555-5555 roamed onto my network and is making a phone call” and the recipient takes this at face value. (“Blue boxing” to fake the phone system into giving you free long distance phone calls worked for similar reasons.) STIR/SHAKEN is supposed to fix this, though I don’t know how far along implementation has actually gotten.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by HeatrayEnjoyer on Monday February 05, 2024 @06:44AM (#39260157)
What happened that made it insecure?

I've heard of stir shaken but I recall FCC ordered it mandatory multiples years ago. Did that not happen?

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by xorcist on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @09:23AM (#39274454)
They let untrusted people in on the trusted network, basically. Telcos are no longer considered national security. Privatization has given us a cheaper and better communication, but security hasn't always kept up.

The authencation above is between the terminal and the location registry (simplified, there are several other components involved). Not internationally between the telcos.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by YetAnotherNick on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @09:55AM (#39274824)
> someone who has bribed (or hacked) someone who works there can

There is literally no encryption that could handle this. By that logic if I bribe or hack yubikey company, then they could ship malicious batch of yubikeys. Or I can bribe or hack microsoft/apple to get root access of someone.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by internet101010 on Sunday February 04, 2024 @03:01PM (#39253799)
From what I gather it depends on the carrier. T-Mobile is supposedly the easiest and Verizon the most difficult. The Darknet Diaries (link below) recently did an episode on how the sim swapping thing works and how expensive it is to get it done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjy8-rVXO7o&t=2190s

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by Aloisius on Sunday February 04, 2024 @06:51PM (#39255761)
Except one can simply ask to call them back to verify.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by mmvasq on Sunday February 04, 2024 @09:43PM (#39256700)
Once you have lived through reporting to a telco you have been dealing with fraud - you learn the procedures are in a scripted loop, everywhere. The answer will probably be go to store get new sim and never reach conclusion it was swapped for people who do not investigate their situation. I haven’t dealt with sim swapping yet some pretty heinous organized crime now and the folks are nice yet you will never walk away knowing the cause or source of an incident.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by thwarted on Sunday February 04, 2024 @02:06PM (#39253291)
phone beeps with SMS message from CEO

"Can you buy $1000 worth of egift cards and text me back with the redemption codes? Our jobs depend on this. I'm in a very important meeting, otherwise of so it myself, left my private key at office and can't sign this message right now."

The human element remains the weakest link.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by Aeolun on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:08PM (#39255026)
Hard to buy 25M worth of gift codes though.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by loceng on Monday February 05, 2024 @07:25AM (#39260491)
"Challenge accepted!"
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by Karellen on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:30AM (#39249089)
It's easy. We just generate our own key pairs, establish a web-of-trust by signing each others public keys at in-person meetups, and then use those signed keys to authenticate all the digital communication we do with each other.

You know, like we've been doing with our emails since PGP was developed in 1991. You can tell how simple the process is, by how ubiquitous it has become in a mere 30 years!

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by DANmode on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:53AM (#39249214)
Publish it in your Twitter bio,

or as a Nostr note, for cool kids to share with other cool kids.

Defeatists get defeated!

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by denton-scratch on Monday February 05, 2024 @08:56AM (#39261227)
> like we've been doing with our emails since PGP was developed

Who is this "we"? I know personally exactly one person with a web-of-trust keypair.

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by chrisco255 on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:22AM (#39249038)
You require that people sign messages cryptographically, including video calls, to validate their identity. You can't fake that.
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by coffeebeqn on Sunday February 04, 2024 @01:20PM (#39252819)
Do any video call clients support this ?
Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by kwhitefoot on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:22AM (#39249043)
Everyone in the call has a cryptographic ID that can be authenticated with a trusted authority. Your device would just ask all the others for a one time token that it then submits to the ID server. The server tells you public identifier of the person associated with that token.

We already have infrastructure for bus and rail tickets, for logging in to banks, tax authorities, health services, etc. in Norway and other countries that could easily be extended to cover this use case..

Re:Finance worker pays out $25M after VC with deepfake CFO by cornholio on Sunday February 04, 2024 @05:22AM (#39249046)
By using it? This was a social engineering attack against an otherwise unprotected service, if you manage to trick the security guard, you are in.