5 ms·
Again, this is a social engineering attack. 2-factor remains mathematically secure.
by stephengillie 10y ago
Again, this is a social engineering attack. 2-factor remains mathematically secure.
- fragsworth 10y agoIt doesn't sound like "2-factor" if all they need is the single code on your phone.
- etherealmachine 10y agoAccount recovery is always a nagging weak spot. At some point, a user will forgot their password or lose their TFA device, and now you need them to be able to prove their identity outside of the usual flow. And if you have enough users, this has to be automated, leaving even more room for exploitation.
- Alex3917 10y ago> And if you have enough users, this has to be automated Not really, they could just charge people $100 to retrieve a lost password and then do it manually.
- marrone12 10y agoThat is a PR nightmare...
- TrevorJ 10y agoAnd in the real world, no one would use that service. You aren't wrong though, that would be the way to do it if you wanted it to be secure.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoCharging $100 is pretty punitive, but I've often wondered why more online services sensitive to attack don't use token credit card charges as a way to limit account duplication, increase complexity in a malicious operation, etc. Stealing credit cards is cheap, yes, but the additional cost to using such a card on a password reset would still be a deterrent.
- bredman 10y agoIMO it's not that bad, people are used to paying locksmiths that much when locked out of houses or vehicles.
- kbar13 10y agothat doesn't mean it's a good thing
- Alex3917 10y ago> Charging $100 is pretty punitive Not really, considering there is zero reason for anyone to ever lose a password assuming they are using a password manager. You could even make it free for the first few hours after the account is created or the password is changed in case the user pastes it into their password manager incorrectly.
- copperx 10y agoAnd how many "normal" people do you know that use a password manager? It's 0 for me. They don't even use post-it notes, which would be an improvement over "I'll just try to remember the password, and if I can't, I'll ask someone to help me ".
- lgas 10y agoAssuming the "someone" is the forgot password feature and not a person, this seems like a sound approach. It's basically using the site itself as a slightly clunky password manager.
- EpicEng 10y ago>Not really, considering there is zero reason for anyone to ever lose a password assuming they are using a password manager Oh, so in other words; a tiny fraction of the internet using public?
- _delirium 10y agoI seem to recall there were some services that charged a one-time small fee in the late-90s / early-2000s basically for that reason. But in the past 10 years most seem to have moved to requiring a mobile phone number as the hurdle instead. The idea is that it has some of the same deterrent effect for bad actors, since coming up with a steady stream of unused mobile numbers costs a nonzero amount, but produces less sign-up friction for legitimate users.
- tetraodonpuffer 10y agoI would love for services that I REALLY care about never ever ever being broken into (email, web hosting) there was ONLY the $100-and-speak-to-a-human option to change the password I would even make it $100 + skype and show live on skype your passport.
- vilhelm_s 10y ago"showing your passport on skype" seems insecure - I imagine it would not be very hard to paste a page with some computer-vision image registration barcodes on the photo page, and then hack up a video filter which pastes in an arbitrary bitmap.
- reitanqild 10y agoI'd say it is two factor (googles implementation, the attack is classical social engineering): something you know (the password) and something you have (access to your phone).
- _delirium 10y agoIn Google's implementation, only the "something you have" is really necessary for access. If you have the phone but not the password, you can just issue a password reset, which is confirmed via the phone, so the password doesn't function as a second factor independent of the phone.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- copperx 10y agoWhoa. I hadn't realized this. So someone that knows my email address and has my phone has access to my entire life, because all password resets use my email address. If it's come to this, to using "something you have", then we can all go back to using paper password notebooks. They offer the same security, surprisingly.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- NeutronBoy 10y agoThat's a bit extreme. You could just put a passcode on your phone?
- kofejnik 10y agoThere have been many attacks in Russia where attackers would get a duplicate sim card from the operator (either with a bribe or a forged passport) and then proceed to hack everything linked to it - gmail, banks, facebook, etc
- untog 10y agoSure, but implementation matters. I've long thought that 2 factor via SMS is a sub-optimal solution because it trains you to expect secure login info from a random shortcode SMS number.
- wdr1 10y agoWas anyone claiming otherwise?
- jrockway 10y agoMathematically secure is totally meaningless. OTPs can be phished, and this attack is a great example of that. U2F is the fix for this.