On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 01:05:33PM -0800, Eric Cordian wrote: > Now this gets even more interesting. There is a lawsuit in the UK over a > South African couple who experienced 190 fradulent Diner's Club charges > totaling $80k in the UK while they were in South Africa. The bank is > trying to make them pay the bill, claiming the credit card system is > foolproof and cannot be hacked. > > Bond is testifying at the trial, and Citibank wants a gag order over the > ATM vulnerability issue. > > Ross Anderson has written the court, opposing the gag order.
Here's my own take on this: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-985545.html This is an interesting case, but it's not as if Citigroup is trying to stifle academic research for the sake of stifling academic research -- the Cambridge folks were retained as (presumably paid) defense experts in the case. This is not to defend the prospect of a gag order, of course -- all that I'm saying is that they ran no risk of gagging until after they volunteered to be experts, as I understand it. The other interesting thing to note is why Citigroup permitted one card to make $80K of withdrawals from one account (which was allegedly closed at the time anyway) in a weekend. The answer seems to be almost certainly a malicious insider in their South African franchise. -Declan
