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by undebuggable 1042 days ago
Polish ING modifies IBAN on pasting it during bank transfer and forces to enter manually first two digits "for your security". They also disable IBAN selection in transfer summary view, so one cannot copy it and double check before confirming the transfer. ING seems to deploy the most arbitrary "security" measures found on most random blog posts and sprouted during the most brain-dead brainstorming meetings.
1 comments

Forcing you to manually type the first two digits makes sense to me. If a hacker is able to modify clipboard text, you manually inputting the first two digits should trip up the IBAN checksum.
Whatever are the motivations and reasoning, bank is doing exactly what the bad actors are doing. They modify the text during the copy and paste workflow.
It's only the same thing if you look from a very shallow angle. Stripping part of the user input to ensure it's entered by the person themselves is otherwise completely different from replacing user input with different data. One defends against a specific kind of attack, the other is a malicious attack.
**m **ad ** **rks **r **u **d **esn't **furiate **u. **r **curity, **ease **ll **e **ssing **aracters ** **ur **nvenience.
How often to you write random text into the IBAN field of your bank? Never, because it's an identification number? What a coincidence.

I mean, just think this two steps further. Hackers change input, and banks change input, so hackers == banks? But hackers also change what is displayed on the screen, and password fields change what is displayed on the screen, so hackers == password fields? Pressing my mouse button on the "reply" button changes what is displayed, so hackers == my mouse?

No, my premise is very straightforward. Do not modify the text during the copy and paste workflow. Copy and paste workflow is well defined and established concept by now. That bad actors are doing it doesn't mean you should. No point in exaggerating my premise and ridiculing me.