Real Time SMS-Based hashing scheme for securing financial transactions on ATM systems

One noticeable dividend of the adoption and use of Automated Teller Machine (ATM) by Nigerian banks dating back to the early 1990s is the ease of access to cash by bank customers. However, incidences of ATM frauds has emerged as a limiting factor resulting in a decline adoption for transacting banking businesses. Fraudsters now employ different means to hunt for user's Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) in order to defraud unsuspecting customers. Existing measures adopted by financial institutions require ATM card holders to optionally subscribe to financial transactions message alerts through Short Message Services (SMS) (debit and credit transactions) and the use of posters pasted in banking halls to warn customers on the need to protect PIN numbers from unauthorized users. These measures are purely informative and do not adequately deal with the problems in real time. In this paper, we introduce a Real Time Instructive SMS-Based scheme called MophTem scheme which compels all customers to subscribe to SMS alerts as a basis for initiating transactions on their account. The bank generates a hash code using the customer PIN number and phone number. The generated hash key is then used to decrypt messages requesting for transactions from the customer. The intention is to provide additional security layer and fortify existing PIN access thus safeguarding customer accounts and account information.