'ATMs 'foolproof' says Interswitch

While once, criminals would emphasise forging peoples signatures to access their bank accounts, they are now beginning to switch to the search for their targets' electronic authorisation codes - usually your PIN number.

Months back, when the Mubadala Development Company of the United Arab Emirates obtained a licence to render telecom services in Nigeria, some Nigerian speculators went and registered scores of Internet addresses corresponding with the Mubadala corporate name and then lay in wait for Mubadala to come and buy back the Internet addresses from them for a juicy sum, since they, the speculators, held the rights to the Internet addresses. This practice is called cyber squatting.

Unfortunately for the cyber squatters, Mubadala registered another name with the Corporate Affairs Commission and left the speculators biting the dust. Also, thousands of phone users have had suspicious people call them to tell them that they had won some bogus prize and then ask the would be victim to send certain monies by way of airtime credit. Now the criminals are targeting Automated Teller Machine (ATM) users. Starting about six years ago, Nigeria began to witness a rapid deployment and usage of telecommunications and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) ware. This trend was heralded by the the roll out of GSM networks - MTN, Celtel ( then Econet Wireless) and GloMobile. Within a short time, the country's teledensity ratio began to grow geometrically and is still doing so. Following on the heels of this, Internet usage started to shoot up, though not as fast as mobile telephony. While this was going on, electronic and Internet banking started to take root, some of it riding on the back of the mobile telephony networks, as people became enabled to check their bank balances and carry out some other stransactions from their mobile phone portals.

In the same time span, the banks began getting involved in other electronic payment schemes. These included Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and Point of Sale terminals (PoS).

This transition from brick and mortar to electronic processes has brought savings in time and tedium and reduced the number of hands needed to get things done.

Like all good things though, it has its downside. One of these is electronic fraud, or the nuisance of failed attempts. As Nigeria progresses into the electronic age, this menace will loom larger and larger and must be dealt with.

Fortunately, other countries which pioneered these processes had made mistakes, learnt lessons and come up with reasonably secure solutions. So, we don't have to re-invent the wheel.

A few days ago, a suspicious e-mail was sent to the mail boxes of many Nigerians. The said suspicious mail falsely claimed that the InterSwitch Network Server which hosts the ATMs of 23 of Nigeria's 25 banks had become infected with a computer virus used by cyber criminals to access and steal information from a database.

The fraudsters then tried to lure peple into disclosing their ATM PIN numbers by asking them to log into a fake website purputed to belong to Interswitch, to change their PIN, which would then have gone into the wrong hands.

Mitchel Elegbe CEO of Interswitch, responding to the scam mail, cautioned ATM users to be wary of fraudsters seeking to deprive them of their hard earned cash.

The fraudsters, he said, usually sent messages by phone call, SMS or over the internet, asking Interswitch ATM debit card and Cashcard holders to disclose their card details, under the guise of participating in non-existent promotions to win prizes.

In some cases, the messages claimed there was an upgrade on the Interswitch network whicn affected the performance of cards.

He adds:"The most recent scam message drawn to our attention is an e-mail being circulated, claiming that the InterSwitch server hosting the banks on the network has been infected with an Mpack Multi-Pertite Malware - a computer virus and that card holders should visit the fake website immediately to change their debit card PIN numbers.

"InterSwitch would like to inform our stakeholders that these new messages and their entire contents are fraudulent and did not emanate from InterSwitch or its' member banks.

"InterSwitch network meets and in some cases exceeds international best practice. As a result, we do not have servers that store cardholders PIN either at InterSwitch or at member banks"

He says that card holders should on no account reveal their PIN numbers to anyone, as it is only through such disclosure that they could be compromised.

Elegbe added that Nigerians had continued to express their confidence in evolving electronic payment modes, especially ATMs. He said the fact that there were now 17 million customers patronising over 350 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) belonging to the 23 banks on the Interswitch network around the country was an attestation to this confidence. He further disclosed that the said 17 million ATM card holders, conducted transactions to the tune of N33.3 million last month (October 2007) alone.

This figure constitutes an increase of 16.43 percent over the previous month (September).

ATM transactions for the said 23 Interswitch-driven banks for the month of September (2007) came to N28.6 million.

The ATM transactions hike on the said platform between the months of August and September last year, was 10.88 percent. Transactions for August amounted toN25.8 million.