Identify Fraud in Dubai
Shortly after the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, Australian IT News ran this mischievous story - showing the Australian identities used by three of the assassins were still being accepted by local banks as valid proof of identity. Probably not as bad as it sounds, normal government delay in processing.
What IS interesting are the comments by Kevin Cox, chief technical officer for the identity company Edentiti:
“What we want to see in the long run is that whenever your identity is used somewhere, you are informed about it. If these people suddenly got a note saying ‘Welcome to the United Arab Emirates’ they would have known.”
With the increase in online identification, Cox said it was inevitable that identity theft would become easier to perpetrate than identity fraud, which required the creation of a new identity.”
In the security business this is a great example of unintended consequences.
We work hard to close one angle off attack, but the attacker just moves his line of attack as a consequence. In this case, it is becoming easier to steal existing passport details than it is to create fake ones.
What isn’t discussed here is the creation of a new victim - the one whose details have been fraudulently abused. Imagine if that was you. And you had to travel. Or were in the middle of traveling. And you came up on a terrorist list in a foreign airport…
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