SMS: Here is your 30s “MFA” code, I’ll send it to you 40 minutes after you need it.
SMS isn’t 2FA. Its 1.5FA.
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?
Dude.
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.
I’ve heard people in the US still use SMS to communicate with eachother. Fucking crazy.
Inertia and ease of use are powerful.
SMS “just works” and works for everyone here.
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.
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.
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
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.
At least it isn’t email or SMS MFA.
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
(only factor authentication)
Nothing compared to BOFA, which is arguably even worse and a lot more stupid
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.
Why?
Totp is easier, cheaper, and more secure. It makes no sense to go with SMS.
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
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)
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.
YubiKeys have almost every imaginable form factor these days. Here’s the USB-C version without NFC:
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…
Thanks for mentioning this! I had no idea
https://bitwarden.com/help/authenticator-keys/#steam-guard-totps
I’ve always hated that I don’t have two factor on my steam account, because of that proprietary app requirement.
Thankfully bitwarden supports it!
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 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 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-Authenticator Steam is still very welcome to go fuck themselves with their shitty app, though.
I think the good people at yubikey want to provide people with every possible form factor, for whatever is convenient for them.
If your organization issued you a yubikey, but you don’t like the form factor, I’m sure you could purchase your own and have them add it instead.
You can also use a USB extension cable, to add a bunch of flexibility between your yubi key and your computer, especially if you leave it always attached. That would remove the lever problem you mentioned
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!
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.
