Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Debit cards are unsafe (Score 4, Informative) 60

If details of a debit card are leaked (e.g. in hacked website) then those who get access to the debit card info can empty your bank account. Once you realize and inform your bank, they will begin an investigation ... which will take 2-4 weeks. Eventually, you should get your money back.

But in the mean time, all your other auto-payments (for rent/mortgage etc.) will fail because there is no money in your account. There are fees from the bank for these, and likely late payment penalties from those you were supposed to pay.

Contrast that with a credit card that is hacked. Once you notify the bank, you don't have to pay the bill for any disputed charges, When the bank finally resolves things the charges are erased from the account.

Comment Re:Random numbers made EZ (Score 1) 80

Random numbers made EZ:

1) Retrieve the front page of a dozen frequently-updated sites, ads and all (e.g. CNN, Imgur, Reddit, Yahoo News, etc)

2) Concatenate the HTML of the pages into a string and strip out all the non-numeric characters. You'll end up with a bloody long string of numbers and it'll be a wildly different string each time.

3) Pick the 71st number in that result. That character will be pretty fucking random.

Sounds appalling. Concatenation? Likely find the 71st number is always from the first of those sites, so no extra entropy from the other 11. Basing your random numbers on a source that an adversary can also read? Also very bad.

Slashdot Top Deals

The ideal voice for radio may be defined as showing no substance, no sex, no owner, and a message of importance for every housewife. -- Harry V. Wade

Working...