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The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

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Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#21
It's insane the AI has been provided the tooling to send emails to arbitrary addresses like that. Like, getting it to send a 2FA code at a user's request is one thing. But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code. It shouldn't have access to the 2FA code itself, or the message subject, or body, or the recipient address, etc.

Why did they give it any of that?!

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#22
post #9

Support requests have always been the weakest link in the security chain for big corps. I've had accounts of mine turned over with 2FA disabled by humans before. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the LLMs are doing the same thing. The simple fact that 2FA can be removed by low level support staff drives me mad. It defeats the whole purpose of the process.

recovery is always the weakest link in any authentication system

fair enough, but what's the actual point of 2FA if it's so easy to override?

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recovery is always the weakest link in any authentication system

It's a tough problem, because people forget passwords, change phones, lose access to 2FA devices, but still need to use their accounts.

I manage customer identity and access management ("CIAM") for a financial services firm. Passkeys are primary, recovery can be performed by providing a government credential remotely (which costs us ~$2-3 per recovery). I do not think it is hard, based on what we have built and spent to enable these capabilities. NIST Special Publication NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines is a helpful resource on this topic.

https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-4/

I think Meta just does not care if they're enabling AI attack surface and vulnerabilities into these customer journeys. It's...certainly a choice, versus deterministic journeys with hard guardrails. They could make different choices.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#26
post #21

It's insane the AI has been provided the tooling to send emails to arbitrary addresses like that. Like, getting it to send a 2FA code at a user's request is one thing. But it should only be able to "hit a button" to send a 2FA email to the address attached to the account, all run with hand-written code. It shouldn't have access to the 2FA code itself, or the message subject, or body, or the recipient address, etc. Wh…

The harness is vibe-coded.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tough problem, because people forget passwords, change phones, lose access to 2FA devices, but still need to use their accounts.

I manage customer identity and access management ("CIAM") for a financial services firm. Passkeys are primary, recovery can be performed by providing a government credential remotely (which costs us ~$2-3 per recovery). I do not think it is hard, based on what we have built and spent to enable these capabilities. NIST Special Publication NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines is a helpful resource on this topic.…

I’d wager your range of tech literacy/capabilities for your firm is much narrower than big tech.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#28
post #24

Always a bit illuminating to me how many exploits seem to so dumb I'd never even bother to attempt them. You're telling me I can just...ask for the password? And that works?

It's not called artificial intelligence for nothing.

Re: The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recovery is always the weakest link in any authentication system

fair enough, but what's the actual point of 2FA if it's so easy to override?

the alternative is people losing their accounts and people aren't willing to allow that. i do think that apple does this a little better where they try everything to contact you in every way they know and it takes a week to get access. at a minimum to change your email it should require a week of waiting to see if the user can access the original mail to the hand off.
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