Disruptive Frauds

The title may be a misnomer. It is not to imply that there are some frauds that do not disrupt any work or any lives. All frauds create damage. In that sense they are disruptive at least after they are discovered. The title has reference to the phrase of ‘Disruptive Innovations’. This term is used when the innovation radically changes lives or style of living. Electricity is one such example where we were literally brought out of darkness. Today, disruptive innovations may not be so dramatic but they have a significant impact. Take the example of Agro Refrigeration by solar energy. The bargaining power of the farmer increases as his stock does not deteriorate during negotiation period. We are all aware of the condition of power supply in India is not too dependable. This is therefore an invention epoch making innovation.

Frauds are accepted to be application of intelligence in the wrong direction. Their inspiration also comes from constructive approaches. One such approach is ‘Disruptive’. The ‘Disruptive’ action may be cause or effect. All frauds disrupt work or even lives of companies after discovery. Therefore, there is not much insight gained in its discussion. ‘Disruptive Action’ as a cause is the objective of this article.

Call Centre Logic

The perpetuators of the fraud base their schemes on the ‘Call Centre Logic’. All of us have experienced some call centers at some time of our life. If you received a supportive response easily, your question was one of the predicted ones. The operators may be trained to respond to ten or even fifty questions from customers. The predicted answers will be ranked according to frequency with the aim to reduce duration of each call. Every Call center aims at low MPI (Minutes per incident). If you ask them any question other than the commonly expected one, they are stumped.  As human beings they will respond either by escalating the issue to their superiors or assure you of a response by email after study. But what if this was a computer?

Computers are not human. If you ask them to do anything they are not programmed for, then they cannot respond like humans. Let us say a menu has 8 options and you press 9. The programmer should have written a logic to display ‘error’ on the screen and keep the application stuck at the menu level. If this is not done then the application will just go down the menu and activate the first lines it encounters. This is too basic today. Programmers do not commit such errors today. But later sections of the applications too need such care and this is where the fraudsters gain.

Let us see a few cases starkly exploiting the aspect of disruption.

E-Wallet payment case

A recent news reported on fraud perpetuated by engineering students. E-wallet payments were done but the Bank ended up paying instead of the account holder. The newspaper did not report the detailed modus operandi either by design or lack of understanding. I summarize it to fall under the category of ‘disruptive fraud’. The perpetuators disrupted the transaction at some point after the payment was done. The application was not robust enough to ensure recall of who the paying person was. In such a case if half a payment transaction is done, the Bank ended up paying. 

Why did it appear only in this case and not when you are paying via credit card or any other wallet application? The answer is unfortunately simple. The Quality Control or QC did not do any tolerance testing or view it strictly from the security angle. If there is disruption at any point of time, the application needs to cancel the whole transaction and not just a part of it.

These are intentional disruptions. The perpetuators locate the points of disruption usually by accident. Network disruption, power outage are some of the accidental disruptions. Sometimes the applications are timed out if the transaction time crosses the threshold time. The timing out can also cause a disruption sometime as I have experienced it. But those are inconvenience and not frauds.

ATM disruption fraud

All of us have used ATM by now. The operations are simple. Insert card, remove card, enter PIN number, enter amount to be withdrawn, pick up the cash. Just four steps. Where can the disruption take place? At any place is the answer. But which point of disruption works, will be found only by trial and error, assuming the programmers had forgotten to install the controls. In one case the ATM user took time to pick up the cash. After the pre-determined time the cash was forfeited by the machine and the account holder got his automatic credit. He then wondered what would happen if he took part of the money.  Would he get part credit? He tried but got full credit. So daily, he withdrew the maximum permitted, let remain in ATM only one low denomination note and slowly pulled the rest. He got full credit despite. He discovered the disruption point. Programmers assumed either the cash it taken or not. No-one assumed part cash to be picked up. Now this account holder was (to coin a new phrase) laughing his way from the Bank and not to the Bank as the old phrase would be coined.

Prevention is only alternative

After detection, any moron can remedy the situation. The challenge is to forecast and prevent it. When the disruption is to be responded by a human being, there is some leeway. However, when a computer driven has to do it, the programmer better have planned for it. There are 2 philosophical steps to ensure this.

Step 1: Design for 120% of the situations without restricting to the brief of the client.

Step 2: Assume some person will want to challenge the application for its intelligence. Make sure the application does not jump to any routine unless it goes through the proper checks. 

Based on these philosophical steps of application design, robustness of application is bound to increase minimizing disruptive frauds.

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This is a poem in Marathi entitled UMBERTHA which means 'Threshold'. In this poem the auditor is standing on the threshold between traditional audit and computer based audit.

Poem: KYA DOCUMENTS HAIN

This is a humorous poem making a dig at the plethora of documents taken by the Banks from the borrowers. The Hindi poem is entitled "KYA DOCUMENTS HAIN".

Computer - Dost ya Dushman poem

This is a humor poem presented 

by CA Nitant Trilokekar at a seminar 

of Chartered Accountants entitled Computer - Dost ya Dushman

Wine Flu

A Pandemic is tragic enough by itself. But when it is misunderstood, it leads to pandemonium which perhaps is more tragic as such was entirely avoidable. Not being a member of the scientific community, I often strayed away from all debates and discussions involving even the ‘S’ of science. How I was chosen to be the epicenter of the pandemic issue in Mumbai is still a mystery to me.

All I was doing was innocently sitting in the waiting room of my family physician when my cell phone rang. My concerned friend asked whether I had a serious ailment to which I replied, ‘Flu’. Out of the corner of my eye I noted all to go silent and stare at me as if I had some exotic sexually transmitted disease. My friend at the other end whose voice was not heard by others asked me why I got this frequently in the summer like others. ‘Wine’ I replied reminding him to my weakness of the fermented grape juice which has to be had in a low temperature. In summer, low temperatures create havoc with your tonsils and your weakness slides you into influenza is what I think the Doc told me once. So I joked to my friend, ‘Wine – flu’ as a summarization of my cause and effect. Before I could revel in the narcissistic moment of my briefest summarization, I saw the patients beat a retreat as if there was a live bomb in the room. The receptionist reached under her desk to fish out a surgical cotton mask as she admonished me for not declaring why I was visiting the Doctor. ‘Should I have told you I am sick?’ I was confused as I assumed all visited any Doctor when they were sick with the exception of some hardworking junior sales representative of Pharma companies. ‘Not just sick but since you have that flu’. I was still confused as I did not have any inkling of what flu I had. Perhaps if I did, I would have self administered medicine. I was in the midst of these thoughts when I saw the receptionist talking to the Doctor and then punching some numbers hurriedly on the phone.

Within no time, some men in surgical masks surrounded me, asking me to come to the ambulance. I peered over their shoulder to the receptionist who waved me out indicating I should go. ‘Which Hospital?’ I asked of the masked faces. He mumbled something which was muffled by his mask and I swore I heard he said Hyderabad. Since asking him again would result in the same incoherent words, I sat in the ambulance holding the available rods of the stretcher tight as he raced through the congested streets of Mumbai. Donning the dress and mask they gave me, I was surprised to step out off the ambulance not in front of any hospital but the airport. Not listening to any protests, they ushered me in a waiting army transport plane. It seems I heard right and it was Hyderabad.

‘When did you come from Mexico?’ one mask asked me in a place resembling a hospital at Hyderabad. I thought he confused Mexico with the other country of India’s most wanted terrorist. So I corrected him saying, ‘you mean Pakistan?’ He shook his head and told another mask, ‘we got a secretive one; call the army intelligence’. ‘Hey, I am an honest tax paying citizen and I even voted see my finger’ I said showing my middle finger. One mask who was writing everything said aloud, ‘patient gestured insultingly’. ‘Did you kiss any Mexican girl?’ the mask behind me asked. Now I started sweating as it started resembling interrogation chamber of spies and even some surgical instruments in the rooms started resembling torture instruments of the cold war era. ‘Kiss a Mexican? With a face like mine do you know what effort it takes for me to even get an Indian woman to talk nicely with me leave alone some foreigner and that to kiss???’ ‘So, YOU tell us how you got the SWINEFLU?’ asked one mask with authority. That was when I realized that my summarization of WINEFLU in the reception room back at Mumbai was misunderstood.

‘It had to do with cold wine not a swine’ I explained. ‘Mexican wine?’ one mask uttered. ‘Maybe Spanish wine’ another uttered. I was incredulous at their assumption while all they had to do was to ask me nicely back in Mumbai. ‘Mexican wine has no name internationally and now you will say it was Spanish fly’ I burst angrily referring to a movie where wine with Spanish fly made the wine an aphrodisiac. One mask punched an intercom speaker phone and said, ‘Sir we have another angle of complication. The virus survives in alcohol. We have new antiseptic issues here’. The speaker phone crackled with static, Get the antidote and you have a Nobel Prize waiting for you next year.’ The moment he said this, all the masks grabbed empty syringes and came menacingly towards me as if he promised them a pot of gold if they killed me.

That was the moment my flu symptoms surfaced after being suppressed so long by a more serious emotion - fear. As I gave a loud static of about 8 sneezes, the men in green masks fell back as if hit by Rambo’s gun. It took them 3 hours to settle the matter to realize that WINEFLU is no relation of SWINEFLU. They let me go; realizing perhaps that a single letter makes a world of difference. As I stood on the street that night in Hyderabad, I realized it was better for me to have admitted to the SWINEFU as now I had only few bucks in my pocket not enough to fly me back (my Doctor’s clinic was in the same block in Mumbai) and who would explain to my wife what I was doing in Hyderabad as she was bound not to believe the truth as you also have not. I have learnt from this experience that next time I am flying and I see my friend Jack in the same plane, I would not say ‘Hi’ to him as it would sound like ‘HI JACK’.

Accidental Hacker my forthcoming book

The story is about hacking and how it is done at small scale at individual level as well at the higher level of Governments as a means of the fourth front of war. The background is based on real events and published news of China’s Cyber Army. Effects or results of their actions mentioned here seem eerily true regarding Frankfurt airport computers being down an hour, designs of latest air-force planes of USA being leaked to China, latest computers & cell phones being assembled in China etc. It is difficult to mark where reality ends and fiction begins. Many hacking techniques are mentioned here, some are well known while some are admittedly yet to be known to the outside world.

The story is about an average employee ‘Rohit’ of a Business Process Outsourcing Company (BPO) also having a Call Centre Division. The reader gets insight into how he tries to solve problems and unknowingly hacks – opens files he is not supposed to. It begins with the simple example of a colleague claiming to have forgotten password to a WORD file which later transpires to be question paper of the HR department. It then escalates to the company’s Singapore office playing dirty by diverting incoming calls business to cheaper China. The book delves into the mind of the problem solver and takes the reader through iterative methodologies as well as the inspiration for the implemented solution. One such solution crosses the path of General Ping the head of China’s Cyber Division who gets hell bent on kidnapping Rohit.  While the other good hackers in India called White hatters are killed by China as a prelude to one operation to enhance their territory into India, Rohit is wanted alive to use his brain for them. 

When the company does not stand by him for the actions ordered by the management, Rohit is forced to flee to an alternative job but gets kidnapped on the airport. On the way the Indian Cyber Force mistake him to be a Chinese Agent but are able to note just in time to save him. The chase takes him to Singapore where there is a shootout and he is handed over for protection to an elite international Cyber force travelling around the world in a ship. China’s investments over the world are also helped by General Ping’s Department in China, is part of this story taking Rohit to Sydney. Romance is provided in the form of a love triangle between the Call Centre Head Sheela for whom Rohit provided a solution proving his undoing attracting trigger sight of General Ping and Susan an international jet setting reporter for an Information Technology Magazine of Europe. With situational humor thrown in, it makes this book light informative reading. 

Reading this is a must if you use a computer.

Better describing Rupee value

‘Fall, Freefall, Slide ….. all terms are from sports so what are these terms doing in the world of finance or economics? Is the economics dictionary economically small to add a few verbs to better describe value of a currency?’ asked my son in these days of currency freefall. I quickly grabbed my hot cup of tea and sipped it slowly trying to think how terms of para-trooping and car drifting were used to report fall in currency. Slide of cars causes squealing tyres and this was screeching in my head so I replied, ‘Why invent the tyre, sorry wheel again when there are terms from extreme sports which are coined after so much effort and can be implanted here.’ ‘But Dad’ he countered, the limits of the terms from sports are already set, or the features are implicit and there is clear understanding which is not adhered when implanted in economic’. ‘Huh?’ I went as I was not a sports buff.

He tried to explain, ‘In a free fall, the person opens his parachute at levels to permit safe landing while in a currency, where is the parachute? In a car slide, the moment traction is regained by the car, the slide stops and car continues in the straight direction. Where are the tyres here?’ Suddenly the onus was on me to justify the import of terms from arena of sports to arena of economic. ‘Maybe only some aspect of the action only is meant to be illustrated’ I meekly defended the use of terms.

Now he wanted to include new terms from sports as a better description of the fall in the value of the Rupee. He described them in the typical school format of using idioms. BELOW THE BELT: This is a foul in Boxing. But this is the impact on all of us as the food gets costlier and our stomachs are hit by the inflation which is the direct impact of fall in value of Rupee.

PILE DRIVER: A wrestling move where one wrestler picks up the other upside down and bangs his head on the floor of the ring. This is expected to knock him out. When the currency value falls so much all of us are knocked out and cannot think what reaction to take. So we just have to ‘give up’.

Example: The actions taken by USA to prop up their internal economy by withdrawal of investment is a pile driver move on India.

Pile up: This is a term from track racing where many cars hit each other and become immobilized. When many currencies take a hit in their respective values, all are in the same boat (track) and hence are in the same pile up!

Example: Currently, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil are in a currency devaluation PILEUP.Dropped cylinder: This is a term from Drag Racing when a cylinder runs too rich (too much fuel in the air/fuel mixture) and prevents the spark plug(s) from firing.

Example: The market intervention by RBI over the past few days was a dropped cylinder as it could not stop the slide in the value of the Rupee. (even though the rich mixture of funds were thrown into the open market)

I had to agree that the new terms are better descriptive. Are the journalists and economists listening? 

end of blog