So secure no technology avail in the world capable of breaking it

[! Drive <drink@aa.net>]

>From Risks 18.70...

Date: 20 Dec 96 15:13:17 EST
From: Andrew Weir <100637.616@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: ATM gangsters

Much British media panic has been devoted to the recent conviction of an
"ATM gang" of high ambition. A collection of high-grade villains with
impeccable pedigrees in robbery, gangsterism and drugs dealing over 30 years
compelled a software expert who was in prison for attacking his wife and
child to help them in their enterprise. The man revealed his role to a
prison chaplain and subsequently acted as an undercover informer on his
release.

[...]

Code-breaking gangsters?

But could they have got that far? Newspaper reports failed to emphasise the
all-important question as to whether the encrypted information could be
decoded.  Defence counsel were scathing about the possibilities and called
experts to testify that it was effectively impossible. One of the defence
barristers said: "The basic method was fatally flawed ... because the
encryption system used by the banks is so secure that no current technology
available in the world, not even the combined expertise of the world's
leading scientists, is capable of breaking it."

The judge appeared to accept this, with a proviso. Addressing the
defendants, he said in sentencing them: "It was not possible for you, with
the equipment and expertise then at your disposal, to carry out this fraud
to a successful conclusion. There is, in particular, no evidence that the
cards recovered by the police would then work or that the codes had then
been broken. However, beyond that I'm not prepared to go. I do not believe
it is necessary to go further but for the avoidance of doubt I make it clear
that it would, in my judgment, be irresponsible and wrong on the basis of
the information before me to accept any additional assurances along the
lines that this is a fraud that no one could ever commit."

Lawyers being what they are, the judge could not exclude the possibility
that the decryption was possible, even though the remoteness of that
possibility does not seem to have struck home, particularly when it is
considered that the gang's only computer expert was working against
them. The gang's expert claimed no expertise in cryptography and yet said in
evidence that there had been a successful decryption dry run. This was not
corroborated elsewhere, and the judge did not accept it.

[...]


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