Join us in making the Internet safer for your family, your banking and business
This blog is written to provide some valuable information on Internet Security. Top Gadgets needs to raise awareness of the potential for Internet fraud especially when we are travelling and have to rely on Internet cafes to maintain contact with family and friends and just as importantly to conduct personal banking transactions to take care of daily expenses.
Keystroke fraud is where an unsuspecting computer user, usually at an Internet cafe, has all their keystrokes recorded by a stealth program. There are many variants of this type of program. They are very difficult, if not impossible, to detect by the average user. This type of fraud amounts to billions of dollars per annum worldwide.
This issue has come to our attention as a result of feedback from and discussions with many people who have been victims of this type of increasing common electronic fraud.
Situation One
Larry used an Internet cafe in Asia to do some banking as well as check his Hotmail and Facebook accounts. While using the computer at this internet cafe his keystrokes where recorded and the criminals involved later attempted to withdraw a significant amount of money from his bank account. It was only the banks due diligence procedures for unusual transactions that allowed him to cancel this illegal withdrawal.
The criminals then changed the details including the password of his Hotmail and Facebook accounts.
All this was possible because he unwittingly used a computer that had a keystroke program installed that allowed for his private usernames and passwords to be captured.
Situation Two
The son of a friend of ours was in the US recently. He used an Internet cafe to conduct a number of online banking transactions; it was not until one week later that he realised over US $5,000 had been stolen from his bank account.
After contacting his bank and proving these transactions were fraudulent, he had to wait 12 weeks before the money was refunded.
This is the typical situation where once the fraud is identified the victim has to firstly prove that he is innocent, and then wait over an extended period for the bank to refund his money.
This is not the first time we at Top Gadgets have heard these types of stories. We have heard dozens of reports of this type of illegal keystroke activity happening all over the world. Listed below are just a few of the many stories posted on the Internet by other victims.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/22550/beware_of_fraud_in_internet_cafes_when.html?cat=3
The solution
In recent times, a number of speciality products have been released onto the commercial market to prevent keystroke recording fraud from occurring. New to our product range is an IronKey USB Flash Drive (IronKey S200 Personal) that is 256-bit encrypted as well as having its own secure version of the popular Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
What this means is when you go to an Internet cafe to do your banking, check your email or Facebook accounts or any other account that requires you to log in, your username and password are protected and cannot be recorded by a keystroke program, as long as you use the secure version of the Web browser on the IronKey USB flash drive.
The bonus of these IronKey USB flash drives is that they also are password protected storage devices ranging from 1GB to 16GB in size. All your information is 256-bit encrypted and password protected. If anyone obtains your IronKey and tries to hack into it, after the default 10 incorrect password attempts, the IronKey will obliterate all data on the disk, rendering it and your precious information, unreadable and irretrievable.
The directors of Top Gadgets were so impressed by the IronKey technology that we all bought one each to access our banking and communicate with our suppliers and clients over the Internet. The high-tech 256-bit encryption technology, coupled with our bank’s encryption, makes it virtually impossible for someone to access private corporate information.
The IronKey is approved for use on the United States Department of Defence (DoD) networks, as IronKey flash drives meet or exceed all new DoD specifications for flash media, after they were banned in 2008 following a Worm attack which was traced to USB flash drives and removable media.
The technology was developed partly through a grant from a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that is tasked with advancing technology designed to protect the US. At a recent board of directors meeting and following a meeting with the people at IronKey, we made it company policy to use the IronKey for all interoffice and directors communication over the Internet. As we all know, the Internet has made business easier, but also has inherent risks. IronKey helps to control those risks.
The directors of Top Gadgets were so impressed by IronKey’s commitment to helping control corporate and personal risk, we enthusiastically endorse this innovative product without hesitation.
Beware of cheaper imitations, and those products that overpromise but can’t deliver. Visit at our website www.topgadgets.com.au for all the technical information on these state of the art 256-bit encrypted IronKey USB flash drives.
Happy and safe travelling and browsing.
Remo Krause
CEO/Director
Top Gadgets
www.topgadgets.com.au
Tags: Encrypted Online Banking, Internet Cafe Banking Fraud, Internet Cafe Banking Scam, Internet Cafe Keystrake Fraud, Internet Cafe Keystroke Scam, Internet Cafe Online Banking Fraud, Internet Cafe Online Banking Scam, Internet Cafe Online Keystroke Scam, IronKey, Keystroke, Keystroke Scam, Online Banking Fraud, Secure Online Banking
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Blame it on Mum or Microsoft….mmmmm Microsoft!
It all started with a promise to look after Mum in the UK for a couple of weeks whilst my brother and sister-in-law took a break.
It was at this stage that I thought an Encrypted USB flash memory card might be a good idea. That’s when I saw Remo using an IronKey and thought, good idea.
I bought a 1GB IronKey S200 online with my PayPal account and it arrived very promptly by express mail.
Now I use computers daily at home, and have done since the Amstrad 6128 was launched, however I like them to be maintenance free, and not something neither my PC nor my wife’s laptop have been recently. My PC is creaking from age but still upgradeable to Windows 7 from XP apparently, and her laptop creaks in Vista and crashes often, that is until I inadvertently loaded a release of Linux Mint8 over Vista and all her files. Even the so-called smart back up disc wouldn’t work on my PC so perhaps we have lost that data too! However, the key arrived before this parlous state of affairs but after my computer had stopped talking through web browsers to the internet!
It was then that in addition to getting ready for the trip I was faced with a sharp learning curve of things I’d rather not know, and frankly am not to keen to undertake, e.g. computer techie! Well the good thing is that the key worked OK in the Vista Laptop (whilst it was still in Vista) but then wouldn’t work in the XP desktop. It was then I discovered there was a firmware update for the key so I downloaded that but Vista crashed in the process and the key wouldn’t work in either machine. I duly informed Remo at Top Gadgets as well as registering for support from IronKey.
Remo got back to me straightaway, and IronKey who are USA base emailed me with two files, I skipped the PDF and found the other file unusable. I said something to that effect and received a similarly tetchy reply from the IronKey techie to read the PDF as it contained detailed instructions on how to rename and unzip the other file, as it was bootable. It seems just one other thing to frustrate anyone happy with the almost rock solid performance of XP is that in Vista there is the need to turn on file extension naming, which of course we hadn’t done with the Vista laptop, well why the hell should you have to, when its already there in every other Windows system before Vista! Anyway, to cut a long story short I unpacked the exe file and ran it and it fixed the crash on the key and I was able to use the built in browser to access the internet as designed on the vista machine but was still finding it useless in the XP machine.
However whilst still fuming about Vista and its poor performance I bought a magazine for the DVD on the cover which promised a loadable version of Linux Mint8. I inserted this in the DVD drive on the XP desktop and it ran from disc and found the intent connection straightaway. After running for while in Linux I closed out and found it had restored my XP browser connections as well so XP was up, running, and wonders of wonders the IronKey was working OK. That was when I decided to divide the hard disc on the laptop and load Linux dual bootable, however something went wrong with the disc division and it seems we now only have Mint 8 on the laptop. Too little time to bother sorting that out as holiday loomed and angry wife needed much hosing down.
The only problem I then encountered was how to load files onto the key so I could take encrypted copies with me. Remo solved that, as the blurb on the IronKey site was like the firmware update, unclear. I have promptly forgotten what he dropped into my place of work to show me, but I loaded on the files I needed and they open OK on Windows 7 and XP machines I have tried in both the USA and here in the UK where I am taking time out to write this blog. I will give it another go in a moment but I think what you do is copy the file to the 2nd drive that comes up in explorer and then open a link to it by right clicking in the management screen. I have pointed out to IronKey that their instructions are a little non-techie unfriendly and hopefully they will rewrite these ASAP, in the meantime the amazingly helpful Remo will tell you how it’s done though if you’re in Perth he won’t pop in and do it personally!
As to IronKey, a great product, which provides peace of mind about password security and will even be used at home to make logging in quick, easy and secure. Only thing is it’s a bit hard to use if you don’t read the instructions – curiously, I had stopped doing that, as no one else does these days, but I am ever so happy to need to do so again!
Cheers David