An international team of computer security researchers demonstrated today a key weakness in the Internet infrastructure that could let hackers launch virtually undetectable attacks aimed at intercepting secured online communications when consumers visit bank and e-commerce Web sites.

By Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 234 million credit cards accounts have been compromised since 2005 and hundreds of millions millions more are at risk. Increasingly enterprises are relying on data encryption techniques as a countermeasure to prevent identity theft. To read more...

"Computer keyboards are often used to transmit sensitive information such as username/password (e.g. to log into computers, to do e-banking money transfer, etc.). A vulnerability on these devices will definitely kill the security of any computer or ATM."

IBM, CA, Microsoft, Nortel, Novell, the US Department of Defense, VeriSign, and others collaborate on personal digital identity. OASIS, the international open standards consortium, has formed a new group to enable the use of Information Cards to universally manage personal digital identities. The OASIS Identity Metasystem Interoperability (IMI) Technical Committee will work to increase the quality and number of interoperable implementations of Information Cards.

Technology advances have enabled about a quarter of the world's population to connect to the global telecommunications system from a variety of devices. These include fixed and mobile telephones, laptop PCs and even mainframe computers, provided they can get a line. In the not-too-distant future, millions, even billions, of machines will talk directly to other machines over the global networks. This makes it increasingly important to understand who (or what) one is addressing in an online communication.