Northern Rock bailed out by Bank of England

I tried the 1850 315115 number just now (listed on the RTE report, linked to by GeneralZod above, as the weekend contact number) but I just get an answering service saying "office hours are Monday to Friday".

Has anyone tried getting them on the phone as yet today and succeeded? At this stage I too am adding crap quality of service, including misleading information to the public, as one major reason why I want to move my money away from NR.
 
askew70 said:
As a matter of interest, is anyone else being prompted for exactly the same characters from their password every time (character 1 and character 9)? I can't remember whether it used to do this before - if so, then it just means that their authentication process is crap (effectively you just have a 2-character password), otherwise it might be an indication that the site is buggered to some extent. Obviously, not good news in either case.
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I was being asked for characters 3 & 5 all the time!
 
dmkelly said:
I seem to be getting the same characters also everytime, but in my case it is 8 & 9.
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That's a security measure when combined with the limit on the number of login attempts. A hacker might attempt to work out all the characters if it wasn't that way. The system has always done that. I was repeatedly asked for characters 2 and 5.

Once you finally make it all the way in the numbers it asks for next time should be different.

Lionheart said:
This amount is showing as now as transaction pending. I'm happier at that rather than waiting for some manual input at NR. I don't understand why the amount wasn't put thro straight away by the person I was speaking to. Were they merely taking a note of telephone withdrawals and then put aside to be actioned later?
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I'm not surprised by this, we'll probably hear many more reports of it. It's one of the main reasons why I didn't even bother ringing them up in the expectation of a mistake being made. The other reason was I wasn't worried enough. Once you finally get through on the online system errors are less likely. Now the long wait to see if they honour the transaction.
 
being tryin to get in since 7.50am still no joy
traffic seems be building again
 
I managed to close my account online at about 3am this morning. It was very slow logging in, but once in the system was quite usable (GOOD!). Set up a same day electronic transfer to nominated account. It's pending. Lets see what happens on Monday.
 
GeneralZod said:
That's a security measure when combined with the limit on the number of login attempts. A hacker could attempt to work out all the characters if it wasn't that way. The system has always done that. I was repeatedly asked for characters 2 and 5.

Once you finally make it all the way in the numbers it asks for next time should be different.
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Asking for selected characters of a password is only useful when the characters asked for are random ones every time. Even asking for the very same characters twice in a row negates all security benefits of asking for "random' characters in the first place.

One of the reasons for asking for selected/random characters is to prevent someone from looking over your shoulder (or doing the technical equivalent) and recording your entire password. Once they know your full password, then obviously they are much close to being able to login successfully as you. Having to input only a portion of your password, and a different portion every time, is an attempt at trying to prevent someone from learning your entire password even if they can record the portions of your password entered over the course of several of your logins. If the system asks for the same characters even twice in a row, then this element of the protection provided is thrown away.

Repeatedly asking for the same characters is a symptom of very badly designed security. It is certainly not a problem unique to NR's website, but you would expect a bank to be a bit more careful about implementing proper security (as opposed to the impression of proper security) than some random supplier that might sell their service via a website.
 
Askew70, I've read your post several times and can't follow it or see why it should be correct. Can you post a link to something backing up the theory.
 
askew70 said:
Asking for selected characters of a password is only useful when the characters asked for are random ones every time. Even asking for the very same characters twice in a row negates all security benefits of asking for "random' characters in the first place.
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I think that the change to different characters of your password depends on timeframes "for change" of details that the on-line bank specifies in their servers... And I still believe that it's because of the traffic that the "change of characters" isn't updating so often...:confused: That's what I think...
 
GeneralZod said:
Askew70, I've read your post several times and can't follow it or see why it should be correct. Can you post a link to something backing up the theory.
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Basically, say you are asked for characters 2 and 3 of your password when trying to login now. If someone manages to record the characters that you type, then they can now try to login as you and if they are asked for characters 2 and 3 they can pass this stage of authentication with the relatively small portion of your entire password that they now know.

If the characters being asked for are genuinely random each time someone tries to login using your account number, then having characters 2 and 3 of your password won't be of any help to someone masquerading as you if at the next login attempt the system asks them to enter characters 5 and 9 for example.

In my case, I have been prompted for characters 1 and 9 every time since Thursday night, so effectively I currently have a password of 2 characters long. Anyone who knows only characters 1 and 9 of my password has all they need to know to successfully get through that stage of authentication if trying to login as me. It wouldn't matter if my entire password was thousands of characters long if the same two characters from it are sufficient to login i.e. my password is effectively 2 characters long.
 
Incidentally, that phone number 1850 315115 seems to answer now. I got put on hold a few minutes ago, but as I have somewhere else to be I hung up after about 2 minutes or so.

For info, BBC Radio 4's Money Box program at 12h04 today is going to be talking about Northern Rock. It is usually an interesting program with discussions with relevant people in the financial industry so might be worth a listen.
 
btw when you request a withdrawl and the ask you for either a date or asap is this the date you want the monry in your nominated account by? also if you choose asap does the EUR25 charge still apply?

EDIT: I am continually being asked for characters 7&8 from my password.

IF you call in what docs do you need with you to withdraw?
 
Askew70, I follow what you're saying now. If I can paraphrase.

"Asking for the same characters every time before a successful login sequence has been fully completed exposes the password stage of the login sequence to an over the shoulder attack."

This weakness is highlighted under the present circumstances where users aren't managing to log all the way in.

Asking for random characters each and every time would prevent this and make it not significantly more vulnerable to ease dropping (inc electronic) than it already is. A small risk is also created however. With repeated failure to complete login sequences, where correct password details are being entered, over a short period (e.g. a day) of time an ease dropper could more quickly build up a record of all the password's characters. Under normal circumstances the user would not be logging in so much so an ease dropper mightn't have time to record all the digits. The risk of this is very low because the communication is encrypted.
 
Harchibald said:
IMHO depositors are actually safer with NR than ever. As I said before BoE are not suddenly going to reverse position and abandon NR.
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That's what EGO said yesterday. I read in today's Irish Times that this is exactly what the CEO of NR is saying and presumably the BoE do not object to this line. The panic seems to be totally unwarranted. I also note that they haven't actually bean lent a been yet from the BoE, just a promise that it will be there if needed.
 
Just a few thoughts and comments:

- When the system is operating normally it asks for a different pair of characters each time. The fact that it is not doing this is a symptom of it being overloaded IMO.

- The staff in Dublin who took telephone instructions most likely have to use the same computer system as us to log those transactions. If the servers are overloaded, they are overloaded for everyone.

- There may be some kind of check that has to be performed on the computer by a member of staff before transactions are released from 'pending'. If this is the case, then the Dublin staff might not have been able to get through to perform this hypothetical check.

- The bank cannot be expected to design computer systems that have the capacity to handle a run on the bank - it just wouldn't make any sense, and there are sound business reasons why you wouldn't want your computer systems to be able to smoothly handle a run!

I tried to get a chunk of money out and got a transaction through yesterday morning - no sign of the cash yet same as everyone else. However there are very logical reasons why the money has not gone through, so I'm not panicing.

Having said that, it would be nice if they could put something up on the website to at least clarify the situation with Irish customers' pending transactions.
 
BraveInca said:
Just a few thoughts and comments:

- When the system is operating normally it asks for a different pair of characters each time. The fact that it is not doing this is a symptom of it being overloaded IMO.
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It asks for different characters after each fully completed successful login sequence. If the system fails to log in all the way but you were giving the correct characters it asks for the same characters again. This looks like a design problem exposed by the load on the system rather than caused by it.
 
BraveInca said:
Just a few thoughts and comments:



Having said that, it would be nice if they could put something up on the website to at least clarify the situation with Irish customers' pending transactions.
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agreed, at least the UK customers have the option of going to a branch, they seem to have left the Irish customers high and dry, not even a telephone number. the 1850 no brings you through to the Uk and they just refer you back to the Dublin office.
 
The website should certainly have been updated by now with some sort of clarification / re-assurance. That said, I'm not looking to withdraw any funds I've got based on all I've read about the situation.

They haven't even received any money from Bank of England as it is!
 
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