Uuuuugh. I just had this problem after dropping my phone. Can’t log into the phone without the phone being logged in. Solution: disable 2fa on a logged in device. If I can disable it from another device why can’t I verify it from another device? This is so broken!
At work usually I can login without any input thanks to SSO, but occasionally it will ask for a security check. The default is to press a notification in outlook on my work phone, which I only ever use when travelling, so it’s invariably off… 🙄
my favorite instance of google MFA was when i went to log into my google account for some reason. Google hit me with the MFA, cool whatever, i’ll MFA, google does the usual “heres how we do it because we give you no options because fuck you” and im like, cool, ok just gotta wait for this to work.
And then it proceeds to not work, at all. Thanks google, very cool. Fortunately, i had a secondary auth app setup so i used that, and it worked, weird how that works huh? BTW, it wasn’t sms, it’s googles integrated android MFA service, which as far as i can tell, is literally a fucking requirement to using MFA.
Also, i remembered again, that logging into my google account, automatically logs me into every google account i have. Yknow, because security. Anybody know how to disable that one btw? Google seems to be an endless labyrinth of options everytime i try and do something with it so.
SMS is good enough. Sure it’s not as authenticator or some other MFA method, but it’s good enough. Chances of my random account hiding something worth subverting cell operator to get the SMS and my password, are slim to none. At that point don’t upload anything worth that much.
SMS isn’t even secure. Mitm, social engineering, straight up theft, and more are all ways around it. It should never have been implemented, but especially not when totp exists.
What I despise most in when SMS is not just optional but forced upon me as “backup” to TOTP. “Lost your authenticator app? Send an SMS instead.” How about no?
Especially because you can just backup authenticator to the pendrive in encrypted form. I don’t care I loose my phone, that’s exactly the reason authenticator is better.
I don’t believe I’ve run into that, but yeah it completely misses the point of totp. Hell, I’d prefer a lockout over SMS backup in most cases, my totp authentication has multiple encrypted backups.
Can you for example send a video, encrypted and to your computer via SMS? I don’t know how much tech they’ve built over the protocol over in the US, but in many parts of the world SMS was charged per message in your phone bill and things like photos or video cost more to send. People abandoned SMS quickly when 3rd party IP messaging apps like whatsapp came out.
Yeah data got unlimited here before texts, which caused people to move on to other things. Now texts are usually unlimited, but that train has already sailed.
Blame apple for that. IPhone has this proprietary messaging app pre-installed which is probably super convinient for the ecosystem but uses some obsolete SMS protocol to communicate with android phones. I think recently this has gotten better, but only because beeper and the EU pressing on them
While I would like the new fancy features. At least RCS is bringing some and is seamlessly integrated.
Bonus I have 10+ years of txt history and can scroll/search to find something. And since my phone is Google (I know evil) I can access it all from the desktop seamlessly in one window.
uhhh that’s not some unique american thing lol, that’s how people here in sweden communicate too
Barely anyone cares what specific protocol is being used, they just care about what app they have to use and who they can reach, and if anyone isn’t using a normal sms app they’re generally using facebook messenger or imessages both of which support sms fallback and thus their users don’t even know there’s a difference half the time.
My wife’s phone started acting up the other day. It would keep losing cell service and even when it showed a signal, it still would only work on wifi.
That happened a few hours after I ported my phone number (on the same family plan) to another carrier. So naturally, I thought the issue was with the carrier.
Since I planned on porting her number out to my new carrier anyway, I didn’t want to troubleshoot.
Well, get to the new carrier and it’s still not working. Go through the whole process of resetting network settings, and then eventually deleting the esim.
New carrier, though, needs you to receive a text message before they send the esim.
Naturally, with the esim deleted, it couldn’t receive text messages.
Her issue did end up being her phone. Even after the port went through in full, it was still hit-or-miss with cell service. Worked on wifi though.
Sorry, as IT person I have to disagree, app based MFA is just way much easier to maintain instead of HW keys.
Edit: forgot to mention that in Finland companies here has to provide phone if your work require that. In IT I don’t want nothing to do with users personal devices, and it sounds insane to me that in US companies force apps to your personal devices.
If you want to install software on my personal device with elevated privileges then I’ll just use a different service than your shitty low effort maintained trash.
App-based TOTP are not phishing resistant and do not require any level of proximity to the login session. The future is more likely passkeys that use device TPMs.
Open an app, find the one number for your specific app among the bajillion you have, oh the timer is almost out and you forgot halfway through, tap back in the app, oh the fucking app scroll all the way to the top again.
Often times, yes. I don’t want to always have to have a USB key on me, but I always have access to MFA apps via my phone, watch, or laptop. I have no idea why you’re typing the code out instead of copying and pasting.
i use keepass to store all my passwords, the database file gets synced across my devices through Dropbox, i open it with a master password, i would like to improve this by also requiring the yubikey
i am kind of confused too as to what exactly the yubikey does in this scenario. my vague understanding is that it was somehow synchronized such that the yubikey would generate sequential random ‘passwords’ which would be checked against the database file (generating its own sequence in the same manner).
i think it stopped working due to some desynchronization between the yubikey and the database file.
Sync shouldn’t really matter, unless you’re using a hotp code as opposed to a certificate or TOTP code.
TOTP being temporal, is based on UNIX time, and a seed key. A certificate will be challenged, which will require a challenge and reply all cryptographically encrypted. It’s not something that’s necessarily stored in some kind of sync, or rolling codes.
I’m not familiar enough with keepass to say what it’s supposed to use with the yubikey in order to work. There’s a few other methods that I’m sure that keepass could leverage to perform the authentication, so I’m not entirely sure what could be the problem.
Yubikey is only really useful for authentication with a trusted party, and not decryption. You can technically use store a secret key on it but then its two biggest advantages are gone, namely that you can’t copy the key and that it doesn’t use the limited storage on the device.
The yubikey can perform a hmac using a secret (supposedly) only available to the key’s internals. This is used in addition to the password, so that knowledge of the password without the key, or the key without knowledge of the password, can’t be used to decrypt the database. It’s kind of a half second factor (I know it’s not technically correct to call it that, but I hope you get the idea).
No they fucking won’t. You know that websites are going to be massive throbbing cocks about it.
“Due to security issues, passkeys for our service must be kept in <Company name>® Secure Passkey App™. Please install the app on your device to continue. This app requires Apple Notification or Google Play services to operate. Must have verified phone number to use.”
Passkeys don’t work on my rooted device - they seemingly set up correctly, but sites like GH claim your device passkey doesn’t exist when you try to actually login. When you go to the affected site’s account settings to add the device as a passkey again, an error of some kind claims the passkey already exists 🤷♂️
Deleting/re-adding has no effect. Using FF with device biometric passkey auth
Passkeys are an open standard. You need to install a Webauthn-compliant supplicant that talks to the browser. The supplicant can be anything, as long as it does the required protocol. The browser doesn’t care.
At the moment the browsers are the main problem. They need to open their APIs properly.
Not necessarily. I found out that bitwarden can generate a QR code that you just scan with your phone that allows your phone to act as a passkey, no browser support required. I was surprised when I discovered that. I had set up my phone as a passkey in Windows, and Windows can use phones as a passkey directly; on Linux that’s not supported so it just gave me a QR code that worked seamlessly. It’s not like a browser URL, but actually triggers the phone’s passkey authentication, kinda like QR codes for WiFi authentication. Pretty neat.
Problem is part of the standard allows the server to require attestation. So congratulations, they only bless their app, or maybe they only bless iphones.
If the service ignores that, then yes, it’s great. It’s as yet unpopular so it’s hard to know, but in adjacent industries I have seen them lock down the to the point it’s as asinine as “open your app to continue”
I agree with this sentiment. Steam notably falls into the third category, while otherwise being pretty good.
But I’m quite disgusted now seeing an image of a Yubikey for the first time. I’ve heard so many good things about them that it’s a major disappointment to see now that they use that awful noncomplaint shape of USB plug.
There are two very important reasons for the metal shield around USB plugs: 1. For ESD protection, and 2. to hold the receptacle’s tongue in place and prevent it from bending away and losing contact. Every USB device I’ve owned that was a flat plug (like this Yubikey image in this post) has within a month deformed the USB receptacle it’s plugged into to the point that the device no longer works in that port. Compliant USB devices still work in that port’s deformed receptacle, because they have a correct metal shield that bends the tongue back into the correct position.
No problems with yubikeys or the receptacle they are plugged into yet.. no idea what you do while these sticks are plugged in.. doesnt seem like a major concern per the reviews
I’ve had my ubikey fido2 token knocking around on my keychain for about 7 years now. Scratched and beaten, works perfectly and never had a port damaged, it doesn’t put enough pressure on it.
It absolutely is, the issue is that most mfa apps spit out 6 character outputs, while Steam requires 5. They’d need to implement the alternative algorithm, but 1password for instance flat out refuses since it’s non standard.
It is kind of annoying that Steam doesn’t enable the usage of third-party OTP apps. To be fair, when they first implemented the feature, that wasn’t widely used and plenty of websites only enabled the use of one specific OTP app like Authy or Google Authenticator. They recently added a QR code login feature, which makes sense, but that still shouldn’t stop them from enabling MFA via third party OTP apps.
Some third party apps allow you to import your Steam OTP, such as Gnome Authenticator
However to obtain it in the first place you need to either use SteamDesktopAuthenticator (GitHub), an android emulator on your PC, or a rooted device to export your key…
It also breaks your ability to do some actions with steam such as changing your email address because god forbid you enter the TOTP instead of pressing accept or something in the app
This is currently me, wanting to update my email but not wanting to go through the hassle of changing my authenticator back to my steam app then re exporting the key to put it back in Bitwarden.
So frustrating that they have to be ✨special✨ with their authenticator algorithm AND ALSO require the app for people who have reverse engineered it.
It is actually possible to use Aegis for Steam, that’s what I do. It’s a pain to setup if you’re not rooted (I think you need to use an Android emulator on a computer and then export the Aegis DB to reimport it on your mobile IIRC) but it’s possible. Look at https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis/wiki/Adding-Steam-to-Aegis-from-Steam-Desktop-AuthenticatorSteam is still very welcome to go fuck themselves with their shitty app, though.
You see, a lot of really smart people worked very hard to make standardized multifactor authentication so different companies can make products that work with the MFA on different sites and services.
The standardized versions are very cross compatible and very very secure.
Some dumb dumbs want to be different and make you install some application on your smartphone so that you can do the exact same thing but only for their site/service. This is widely considered a bad idea, and it makes people sad. Having to install yet another app, just so you can do something that could, and should be possible with the very good existing technology that’s been created by those very smart people I mentioned before, is stupid, inconvenient, and frustrating for anyone who understands how these things work, and how secure they actually are.
Since the app that the dumb dumbs made was created by them, for them, and they don’t share how that app functions, it can very justly cause concern with those that enjoy their privacy, since the app could be doing any number of potentially nefarious things. When you compare that with the known and trusted methods of authentication created by the smart people, it’s understandable that people would not appreciate having to use some proprietary application to do something that’s already able to be done in a safe and predictable way.
… I think I may have used too many big words. You did ask me to eli5…
Standard authenticator (software or hardware) are, well, standard. You can pick anything compliant and use it with any compliant service. Requiring a specific app means that you have to install yet another app, which may or may not be well made, and may or may not snoop on you, and usually will only work with one service, assuming you have a compatible device to run it to begin with.
It’s more than an inconvenience; not insurmountable, but way more work than just having a standard thing that works perfectly well and is based on known and proven algorithms.
Depends on how it’s configured by the company. I’ve faced in the past the situation of having to login with the company email to be able to use the MFA with a propietary app, which meant I needed to enroll into the BYOD policy and it includes remote device management.
Ended up installing an emulator in the work laptop just for that purpose and left the company shortly after.
Yeah, I’ve seen that prompt at least 50 times by now. There’s almost always a button to use a different authenticator app, which shifts the code to be TOTP compliant.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that button not be there.
To be fair, the MS authenticator app is also useful as a totp app, so it’s not all bad. I mean, I don’t use it, but it’s not all bad.
If your company (assuming this is for ms365) can also enable FIDO2, so yubikeys are also possible, but they’re not enabled by default, so your 365 admin needs to go press a button to allow that for you. MS even supports passkey for passwordless login. But again, not enabled by default. Fun fact: Windows 10/11 also support all of this but if you’re on an active directory domain… You guessed it, it’s not enabled by default.
To their credit, Microsoft has made some pretty significant strides in account security in recent years. It’s pretty impressive; though requiring a TPM for desktop Windows (especially the “home” versions) still makes me raise an eyebrow. Overall it should help with security… But a hard requirement? Okay Microsoft. If you say so.
Not the OP, but I have to use the stupid Microsoft authenticator for work, and half the time it’s hibernated and doesn’t wake up when prompted, and when I manually open the “verify login” tab, it spits out an OTP but doesn’t recheck for that 2 digit number number I have to enter.
And the login prompt on Windows doesn’t have a “resend” button, I can merely click “I don’t have access to the authenticator app”, and then it offers me the option to… Enter a manual code (courtesy of the authenticator app) or use the authenticator app. Dumb as fuck.
If then I opt for the authenticator app instead of the override code, there’s a ~30% chance the app will not accept the new number because it’s still expecting the former one, if you’re too quick to enter it.
My bank has its own authenticator app, which doesn’t work on my phone. Piece of crap. They now enabled fingerprint login without additional 2FA somehow, and I can also authorise payments with biometrics. Only to change my limits, update address etc. I have to use the app (on an old Pixel 3a as a standby device just for this purpose).
I would change banks. Stuff like this is a reminder why letting government run such services is a bad idea. (I’m sure your bank isn’t state owned but still)
For one that requires more training and support. However I think the biggest reason is that it is predictable and requires access to the device. You also can’t steal a phone number as easily as stealing poorly secured keys
Poorly secured keys usually still require device access, unless they are secured so poorly that the individual would be compromised in one of many other ways regardless.
Stealing a phone number requires, at most, paying off an employee at a telco company. At best it just requires a call and some social engineering. And don’t forget, people who leave their phone laying around without a passcode exist.
Now, neither of these are really options for a dragnet approach, they’d need to be targeted. But the fact that one can be done fully remote should be a red flag.
You’re misunderstanding. Totp apps require authentication to use them, be it a password or bio-authentication. SMS does not, it just requires the phone number.
You can get the phone number through any number of ways, but it can be done remotely meaning no one ever interacts with you or your phone. Through various methods, they have your phone number transferred to a different phone, and then have the SMS sent directly to them.
Totp apps (typically) have a backup system in place. 1password as an example, uses their servers to host the data. But you can also back that up. The chances of someone gaining unauthorized access to your Totp account comes down to your security, and which service is chosen. 1password again as an example, is fully encrypted, they can’t see your passwords, if you forget your security token, the only solution is to wipe the entire password store and start again.
The difference in security is mountainous. It’s the difference between a single family home, and a bank vault.
Or email OFA. Burger King, Popeyes (I know they are the same company), and just a bit ago, BuyMeACoffee. They let you enter a password; fuck if I know what their requirements are. No tooltip, no failure text. 60 char with special chars? Nope. (a few moments later) 20 chars with no special chars? Nope. Fuck it, let’s try 2FA. Get seed, generate code, go to setup verification page (on phone), first box, paste. ONLY THE FIRST NUMBER PASTES AND MY KEYBOARD CLOSES. SCREAMS
For those who don’t know, the BofA app clears the username and password fields every time you switch to a different app, completely thwarting the use of password managers because Bank of America is apparently Hell-bent on forcing everyone to have easily-typed (and therefore easily-brute-forced) passwords.
Android has password managers with keyboard app integration so you can paste both fields from the keyboard itself
I use Keepass2Android and it’s own keyboard app for this. I switch active keyboard app when the login field shows up to paste and then switch back to my normal keyboard after
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