The latest window dressing rubbish from the 'security industry' has succumbed in less than three weeks. The green browser security bar carp has bit the dust already.

These snake oil salesmen belong with the fraudsters.

Paypal no less, you'd think with the amount of PR they spend telling us they're the safest, they could actually be half competent. Apparently not.

Surprise, surprise that their security could be compromised. Researches have shown that the green bar is worthless demonstrating how to fake the Paypal site complete with green bar and padlock and steal user's logons. I didn't waste too many words when I blogged about this latest rubbish so I won't now.

Suffice to say I told you so. Here on finextra. I'll leave it to the fools who bought it to explain to their bosses, and dream up some new way to confuse users and waste money.

Apparently the Aussie banks have thrown $40 million into another plot to come up with the solution to their problems. The 'top secret' project funded by the banks is supposed to produce the answer to our account security problems.  Last year it was called the 'Trust Centre' and I think they've actually run out of sensible names for their fantasies and are now on to secret projects.

Pick any name and when you go belly up again why not call Paypal?. It has as much of a future as their last effort.

p.s. Credit where it's due - Verisign came up with the 'green', I suppose it earned them a bit of green at least.  I think they did it to try to defeat the problems they had with SSL hijacking.

Their flagship client was Paypal no less.  HSBC introduced it too didn't they? Verisign offers a $100000 warranty.

Gotta go and call the broker, think it's time to short a few shares.

UPDATE 

It's nice to hear another honest voice out there calling a spade a spade. and in this case it's more about snake oil.

"Companies are wasting money on security processes--such as applying patches and using antivirus software--which just don't work" - Cisco's chief security officer John Stewart.

Speaking at the AusCERT 2008 conference in the Gold Coast yesterday, Stewart said the malware industry is moving faster than the security industry, making it impossible for users to remain secure.