Authentication for my work email: Enter 28 character password, receive sms, enter message, log in
Authentication for my Battle.net account:
-Enter email made before 2000 because they don’t let you change email
-Enter password
-Get rejected
-Solve CAPTCHA
-Try backup passwords, get rejected
-Request new password
-Send request to 24 year old email
-Try to log on to 24 year old email, email is suspicious and sends Authentication request to my newer email
-Open newer email, Authenticate older email
-open old email, Put in code to battle.net
-Battle.net requests Authenticator code from Battle.net app
-Open battle.net app (no requests)
-Try manual code, doesn’t work
- Realize Battle.net app Authenticator not connected
-Try to connect Battle.net app Authenticator to account
-Realize you cannot connect Authenticator without signing in AND signing in requires Authenticator
-Close Battle.net app
-Open Blizzard Authenticator
-Close warning that this app got depreciated in January
-Enter manual code
-it works
-Attempt to change password to password I first attempted
-Won’t let me use same password
-Try logging in using that password
-Still doesn’t work - Solve one more CAPTCHA
-Change password to backup password and back to original password - have to solve 2 more Captchas
-Finally works
-Log in
That just kept going. I feel you, but maybe try a password manager? You open it up, type blizzard and it tells you exactly what password you used. Even better, it can generate really good passwords for you.
I use bitwarden.
I hate forced 2FA that you can’t disable anyway. I don’t want to waste time waiting for an insecure text, I don’t want to input an unencrypted code you sent to my email, I don’t want to click your damn notification that runs through Play Services, and no I’m not enrolling in passwordless auth. I don’t need to be babied into securing my accounts. Any account I do actively and willingly secure is already using TOTP. Let me put in my username and password, then kindly fuck off.
Yeah. So you, myself, and some others are the exception to the rule. But, you can’t look at it that way because its a ‘lowest common denominator’ problem. The least secure of us means we are all only as secure. Others need to be hand held.
It’s definitely time to raise all boats and drop SMS 2fa like a hot rock.
The most natural authentication mechanism for humans is a key. That thing you carry with yourself. A physical key containing, well, the actual secret (shouldn’t be retrievable, should be used for decrypting access request and signing the response) that, maybe combined with your password (another natural for humans authentication mechanism) or maybe, yes, TOTP, gives you access.
Like those “security keys” Imperial officers in Jedi Outcast carry with them. Maybe a bad example.
Phone numbers are used as identifiers because governments like it, nerds don’t like it, and normies explicitly like what nerds don’t like and also want everything to be insecure, they call it “having nothing to hide”.
Also “normal and social” people have that idea that their social prowess is more elegant, smarter at ensuring their security that those dumb and boring nerd technical solutions. So them always choosing things logically opposite of sane, like social media instead of forums, and phone numbers instead of any other identifier, is literally a matter of principle. It’s really not that hard to use something else. They do the stupidest possible thing technically to prove a point that you only have to do the smart thing socially. I mean, in Galileo Galilei’s case the other side of the disagreement is generally considered right, but that’s not an argument effective in society.
I should admit that I’ve been doing the opposite - the stupidest possible thing socially to prove a point that only technical sense matters, which is why nobody would send me encrypted mail except Facebook with its notifications, and nobody would write me in Tox, and nobody would even contact me via XMMP. Which is why I’m now using TG, VK, FB, WA and Signal for communication, of these Signal is secure, and WA is kinda better than the rest of them.
The end of an era.
Or actually, probably not until we redo whole cellular phone technology works and kick out all the bad actors using SS7 vulnerabilities for stuff like spoofing numbers and stealing messages. We really shouldn’t be using a 45 year old system for almost all communications.
Use Telegram.
Not the app, the 200 year old wire radio messaging system based on Morse code, E2EE (Elderly man to Elderly man Enciphered)
I guarantee you that is the opposite of a solution, old man encryption is very easily hacked by other old men for spoofing, redirecting, or listening.
if you count whiskey and cigars as hacking
NIST has been saying since 2016 not to use SMS for MFA. It’s always been horribly insecure.
The problem for me is that most Canadian Banks give you the choice of SMS or their shitty adware filled bank app that relies on Google Play Services and wont implement TOTP so I can use a true MFA app. And Im done with being forced to accept user policies I don’t agree with to do shit, and most of all done with Google Play Services on my device 😑
Should be illegal to put ads in something as crucial to day-to-day life as a banking app.
If it’s not illegal, then everyone is going to do it and we won’t have the “choice” that crapitalists love to tout so much.
Its supposed to be illegal for banks to be in “sales” but my wife was working for BMO and they were forcing her to prioritize outbound cold calls ans upselling products the customer didnt need and would clearly be bad for their financials as a Personal Banking Assistant. The conflict of interest was so great it stressed her right the fuck out and she had to take leave and start therapy. Her MS also spiked likely due to the stress levels. She was there to help people, and she made the bank earn loyal customers and they willing got more products from the bank because she helped them. She was the top performer at the bank if she just let her do the job she was there to do, but instead her boss started ragging on her daily about her cold calling numbers and forcing her to cancel necessary appointments and focus time to deal with customer requests and instead prioritize sales.
In the end her numbers dropped, her customer satisfaction dropped, and her MS got worse from the stress and she’s now on long term leave, uncertain if she’ll recover her focus and able to go back to work. Her neurologist has said she cannot go back for now.
Not sure how that bullshit helped the bank, but I can sure see how I didn’t, and I may be wrong but I think there are laws against it.
Also worth noting that this change in tactics happened right at the same time BMO took all their “we’re here to help” signage down. Brings so many memories of Google dropping the “don’t be evil”. Everything that came after in both cases was shit.
EDIT: Oh looks like CBC did an article on this now because it is so prolific. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/banks-upselling-go-public-1.4023575
Adding to this that my Canadian bank just updated their app and it doesn’t work with my older phone. So my only option is to use online services with SMS/call verification.
It’s such a joy to know that my bank, who made $40.670 billion last year, takes care of every customer equally.
My bank prides itself being the first in the country to support yubikeys for 2fa. I was so happy until i learned it’s just for logging in, transactions are still confirmed by SMS or their app. And security experts all say it’s better this way, using a regular 2fa solution would be insecure because you wouldn’t know what you’re confirming.
There really is no hope.
It’s definitely possible to have a hardware token which allows confirming the transfer details - https://www.manua.ls/nationwide/card-reader-security-for-internet-banking/manual
I’m not defending that madness, but that device doesn’t show who is the recipient. The argument was that this is protection against phishing sites pretending to be a bank, proxying your connection but sending it to a different recipient.
Makes one wonder how much the user has to fuck up to end in such a scenario, and of it’s really worth transmitting everyone’s financial data in almost plain text over the air for this
This is the main reason I switched to Fidelity here in the US. It’s a brokerage, but it does basic bank things, like checks, debit card, etc, and they support SymantecVIP, which works w/o Google Play Services. TOTP support really isn’t that hard, I don’t understand why banks are so slow in adopting it…
The issue is, banks are only going to do what they’re required to do by law. The government is run by dinosaurs who don’t know what computers are, let alone what TOTP is.
No, they’re only going to do what they’re required to do by their insurance. The law is an option, but if insurance costs go way up if they don’t have proper MFA, they’ll get MFA.
Thanks for this…I might be opening a Fidelity account…
They’re fantastic. :)
The only negative stories I’ve heard are from people who really push the boundaries, like people day trading and whatnot. If you’re a regular user looking for a bank alternative, you should be good.
Just know their branches don’t really have any banking services, so you can’t go there to withdraw or deposit cash, get a cashier’s check, etc. I keep an account w/ a local institution and transfer money as needed for banking services.
Now you’ve got me wondering about this for Canada. Would be a pita to move mortgage and investments, but there must be a better way than the big banks.
Here’s a website that tracks this kind of thing. No guarantees about being up-to-date, but from a surface-level check, it looks like you have options.
Wouldn’t count on it being up to date. For my country 4 out of five biggest banks in the country are missing.
They accept contributions, and I’m sure raising an issue with details would be fine as well if you don’t feel comfortable making changes directly.
Thanks!
Even Bank of America doesn’t support MFA apps.
They support USB hardware tokens… but only for the website. Everything else is SMS which kinda defeats the point.
Annoyingly, other than Vanguard, they are the only financial institution to support USB FIDO tokens
Since when was sms ever secure? My understanding is that messages are sent in the clear, meaning your carrier and the recipient’s carrier both have the opportunity to intercept messages.
I mean that’s the message content, not the authentication, but still, sms is the opposite of secure, always has been.
Not true. SMS is encrypted in 3G, LTE, 5G. Block cyphers like Kasumi and A/9 are used. SMS is reasonably secure, because it’s hard to infiltrate telecom systems like S7
because it’s hard to infiltrate telecom systems like S7
cough You can pay a few grand and get access to SS7 networks.
Might be out of reach for most of us, but we can rest assured that any and all security firms and goverrnment agencies have access to this information at a moment’s notice.
Simply paying is not sufficient. You need to be a telecom company, or a researcher afaik.
In what world would the US gov care to get into your bank account? Or your Facebook account when it’s already tightly controlled?
It’s hard, but not hard enough from what I’ve been able to gather. We should want something better IMO. I’m surprised that TOTP isn’t more common.
S7 will be retired or extended with access control. TOTP apps don’t work for edge cases like broken phone. Dedicated token devices get lost. SMS will continue being the main solution for 2FA.
Nah what we need is good privacy-focussed companies getting into the public IAM space.
You know how you can sign into stuff with your Google or Facebook account? And get a 2FA push to your phone?
Like that. Except by a company with a shred of ethics and morality. Like Proton.
I do also think that we all should have a cryptographically secure federally issued identity for official uses such as signing documents or signing into financial accounts and other things that must use your official identity, and not an online pseudonym. Like SSN but on a smartcard. Basically CAC or ECA but for general civilian use.
Proton is already used for identity management: OTP via email. They’ll implement OAuth if there’s enough demand for it. A company’s purpose is to be profitable, ethics side is largely irrelevant.
Many countries already have digital government ID: Australia, Estonia, Russia.
A company’s purpose is to be profitable, ethics side is largely irrelevant.
Maybe so, but companies such as Proton’s biggest asset is their reputation…a reputation of being privacy-focussed. Without that they are nothing, and they know that. As a result, they try to live up to that reputation as well as possible.
Being as it was started by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (among some of CERN’s other founding fathers of the web) is just icing on the cake.
Proton gives data to governments if requested. Why are you trying to shill it?
Oh it turns out we needed NSA to do its actual fucking job after all rather than holding onto exploits for the surveillance state.
Now — for the second time — we have an adversarial administration eager to weaponize government departments while Americans are vulnerable. Why? Because America is the good guys and would never abuse its extrajudicial powers (say, by detaining, rendering and torturing Americans with names similar to those of POIs.)
We could have had twenty-four years of robust communications security developments if NSA didnt sell the public out like Judas.
rendering
Wait, are they melting people down to make soap now? Fight Club wasn’t just a meme then…
Extraordinary Rendition is the euphemism from the aughts from which the movie Rendition was titled. It means taking your detainee somewhere else, often across national borders, to a black site, usually to do things there for plausible deniability (e.g. we don’t torture in the United States )
Looks like I missed that movie, I’ll have to check it out.
And I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term “rendering” used in that context, I guess we just used other terminology. Thanks!
Always has been
Oh man it sure would be nice if the feds had the power to regulate something like this /s
id take email Authentication over sms Authentication if there was only them 2 let me use my 2facter app for the love of god plz i hate how banks use sms its like come on man
I’m really happy that my doctor’s website uses Signal to send the authentication code.
Email is also unencrypted
Ya just saying I don’t like sms I wish email was encrypted maybe one day
'nuf said
of course it is. forced 2fa BY SMS OF ALL THINGS is one of the stupidest ideas
I assume businesses only jumped at the chance to enable SMS 2FA to get their greedy little fingers on our phone numbers.
It was the simplest/cheapest form of 2FA to implement. Grandma will never understand how to setup TOTP.
Capitalism requires regulations, otherwise it will ALWAYS do what is cheapest or most profitable, regardless of how dangerous or destructive.
Even stupider is supporting hardware keys for MFA, but having SMS fallback which can’t be disabled (looking at you, Vanguard). I’d much rather have email as my second factor than SMS, and I literally abandoned a bank (Ally) for removing email as an alternative to SMS.
Been saying that for years. It’s about damn time.
SMS spoofing and SIM swapping have been around for ages. It was never secure and that’s always been known. The number of companies that rely on it despite sending me a zillion other fucking useless emails is too damn high! Email, or better yet, an authenticator app, are far more secure. Not perfect, but better.
Wait, how is email more secure than SMS?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_spoofing
So, it’s not that the message itself is insecure, but the inability to verify the sender makes phishing attacks possible or similar things. I get a text from a random number saying “click this link to pay your bill!” And I don’t have any way to trust its legit.
SIM swaps make it so people can take over your phone number temporarily and then generate 2fa requests to gain access to accounts. Doing the swap usually involves bribing someone or gaining access to a providers database by other means, but its been done a lot.
There are ways to prevent this, but the most straight forward is using a MFA app. Barring that 2FA via email is the next best thing.
Forgive my ignorance, aren’t emails sent in plain text that can be read by any of the networks they are passed between? I’ve always been taught email is the least secure of any communication.
I’m not a security expert so my ability to explain is limited, but no, emails have long used encryption protocols like SSL to prevent such problems. However, your email provider may scan and read your emails. That’s not much different than a text message service reading those messages, but you can choose your provider. From what I can tell proton.me is the way to go for resolving that issue - they provide encryption which prevents their own machines and employees from being able to read your messages and other data. Otherwise, your email is basically as secure as your passwords are.
OK, I had no idea what I was talking about, lol. Thanks for responding!
No prob, this stuff is difficult to keep up with. I’m still always learning and hoping I’m doing it right
One big reason I’m hesitant to keep my money in banks is because banks think the best form of two-factor authentication is text message based 2FA and I’m like that’s barely any 2FA at all.
My banks are like that too. Of course I can’t speak to anyone who might influence that decision. Steam has better security than almost any other account I have. I appreciate them for that but it also seems ludicrous to me that my video games are more secure than my bank accounts.
I keep my money in Monero. That way, it’s me who has to be targeted instead of an institution. And if I fuck up and lose it, it’s my own damn fault.
I have some crypto, some stocks, etc. For many things I still need standard banking though. Crypto just isn’t there yet. Maybe someday… But having money distributed is still smart either way, so I have many baskets for my eggs.
I keep a little bit in the bank, like enough to pay my bills and such, but any extra I put into Monero.
Hollywood hacking has nothing on real hacking it seems.
Thank god, give me my HMAC hash please.
Nothing more terrifying than losing your phone number these days because of all the accounts tied to it via 2FA.
Didn’t this happen quite awhile ago? I don’t see anything new in this article
