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. [...] http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks