I remember people in the movie theater laughing during a particular scene in “The Last Starfighter”. One of the “alien” pilots has a digital device that shows pictures of his family — like an album on a screen — and the human starfighter is incredulous.
Fast-forward to earth today and a myriad of devices are on the market that might fit the bill, but the latest Garmin product seems especially like something a starfighter might stow on his/her ship. It’s called the nuvi and, of course, it’s only available to Europeans right now.
No announcements yet from Garmin on a StarWars-like holo-imaging display included with a robot travel-companion…
Bruce Schneier picked up the ATM story today on his blog, with an interesting perspective. He says “how lucky everyone was”…I posted something in his comments section about the liability issues raised in the article, which is where I felt I would have been headed anyway.
Bruce also has added an excellent link to Ross Anderson’s page regarding phantom withdrawls.
The British Crown Prosecution Service announced on the 19th that they have created a “110 strong network of high tech crime specialists”. I noticed this today, ironically around the same time as the Register article on ATMs and phantom withdrawls.
The Register has a fascinating report on how British Banks failed to deal with the fact that phantom withdrawls from ATMs were a real problem, until a man of integrity discovered it and (arguably) saved the system:
“This is the story of how the UK banking system could have collapsed in the early 1990s, but for the forbearance of a junior barrister who also happened to be an expert in computer law – and who discovered that at that time the computing department of one of the banks issuing ATM cards had “gone rogue”, cracking PINs and taking money from customers’ accounts with abandon.”