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john_strinlaitoday at 2:07 PM3 repliesview on HN

>Set up a verbal codeword with family and finance contacts. Pick a phrase that has never been spoken on a recording and never typed in chat. Brief the people who handle money on your behalf. If a call ever asks for a transfer, the codeword is mandatory.

good luck with this. most finance people deal with hundreds to thousands of clients. they obviously cant remember everyones code word. commonly used finance systems arent setup to securely store these codewords. they dont have processes or policies in place to implement or adhere to any sort of codeword verification.

>Rotate where voiceprints are still in use. [...] Do that now, ideally from a new recording in a different acoustic environment than the leaked sample.

would this even have an effect? i have never heard of "rotating" a voice print. isnt the whole point of a voice print that you cant really change it? if simply switching your environment completely changes your voice print, that would make voice prints utterly useless to begin with.


Replies

wongarsutoday at 2:27 PM

Someone who has hundreds or thousands of clients presumably couldn't remember every client's voice either, so no meaningful security is lost. They are approximately as secure or insecure as before

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tenpointwotoday at 3:03 PM

With most US banks, you can ask them to put in a note on your account file for a code word, it will show up anytime the account file is pulled up. Now, whether or not a customer service agent will know to do so is another question. Maybe as attack vectors like this are utilized more often it will become part of their SOP. Or just stop using voice verification. In my experience, even if you pass voice verification, it only grants you access to the account and check balance and txs but still requires information like PIN or a code sent in the app or phone number. There are attack vectors for these as well but not guaranteed.

The other use cases (like calling payroll, etc) likely don’t have the same protections and probably would be more effective.

iterateoftentoday at 2:24 PM

Yeah seems like nonsense advise. Have a code word that was never recorded? I don’t see how that would tote y anything. Like the point of these systems is they can say stuff you never said convincingly

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