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SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

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171–180 of 328 posts

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#171
Not only SMS 2FA, but in the past maybe couple years, many sites have been making their logins worse in many ways.

For example, I'm actually liking Walmart.com more than Amazon in some ways lately, but logging into Walmart.com takes minutes while I wait for the 2FA after I already password authenticate. So Amazon wins all the casual browsing and impulse sales, and by the time I do log in to Walmart.com, it's only because I know I want to order something from there specifically, and it's already feeling tedious.

Some off-the-cuff suggestions, since the worsening authentication experience really bugs me:

1. Present the email/username and password fields simultaneously, so the browsers like Firefox can fill out both fields. (A lot of site have started showing only the email/username to start, and also making that rely on non-login form field filling. And only after you type in your admin/email, because you don't form autofill in general, does it present

2. After user opts to authenticate with a password rather than SMS/email code, let them in, unless you're something like a bank or a medical provider. (Don't then make them do the SMS/email code anyway.)

3. If your mega online store handles HIPAA-sensitive data for some small percentage of visits, and you need 2FA for that, maybe only do the 2FA to upgrade the authentication confidence for session. (Or maybe the more sensitive data is on a different backend anyway, so as not to encumber all the developers implementing Wheaties logistics, with all the additional protections that are needed for medical records, nor to add additional weak links leading to leaks.)

4. When SMS/email 2FA is really necessary, send it immediately and reliably, and make it copy&pasteable. (Sometimes I wait minutes, and other times it doesn't come through at all. And I've even gotten email ones where competent-user text-selection picks up whitespace somehow, or even a weird unprintable Unicode character, which breaks the code entry when pasted.)

5. Those buttons to authenticate a variety of other sites are needlessly leaking information, and creating additional ways to compromise the account. (That's what you do if you want to reduce friction to first visits to your site, for which people aren't interested enough to create a password to use -- but not for logins from recurring customers.)

6. Don't prompt for "remember this browser?", and don't otherwise rely on the persistent tracking data deposited on the user's browser, across explicit authentication sessions, such as to decide whether to 2FA. For one reason, those persistent data mechanisms are overwhelmingly for shady abuse by the adtech/surveillance industry in shady ways, and are frequently cleared by privacy-conscious users. Any why is a bank, for example, complicating the UI, to ask ordinary users whether to lower their authentication security on this device, and expecting much sense out of that at all. Keep it simpler, more secure, and more responsible or respectable.

7. If you must support 2FA, make TOTP an option. And not TOTP-incompatible codes that requires installing your app, or that depends on some oddball third-party proprietary authenticator app/fob that seemed like a good idea at the time but is not a reason not to support TOTP. (You can still grandparent in the legacy proprietary 2FA, for those long-time users who've been using it, and be clever about not complicating the UI for those those dwindling users, nor for the increasing users using the more current open standard.)

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#172
post #125
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TOTP isn't phishing-resistant, which is the whole ballgame. I've had the job of working on authentication for highly-targeted mass-market systems, and code-generators basically don't work: they raise the bar on phishing attacks to a level phishers still easily meet.

TOTP and SMS 2FA prevent credential stuffing attacks, which is very valuable considering how bad people are with password reuse and how many breaches with plaintext or weakly hashed passwords there have been.

Yes, but other authentication factors also prevent credential stuffing, as well as phishing, which is probably the most important problem in authentication.

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#173
post #159

Some of the comments pointed out that this is hostile behaviour for people roaming as well, and I completely agree. Here is my solution for this : When I am roaming internationally, I leave my SIM card in a spare android at home plugged into a charger. Android has an app that forwards SMS to API : https://f-droid.org/packages/tech.bogomolov.incomingsmsgatew... . Every time I receive a SMS I forward it to this API. Th…

I did something similar where I left an old Android phone at home and logged in to what I think used to be messages.android.com (now google.com) from a laptop praying the session wouldn't get lost before I got back from my trip. :)

Lately though, SMS works over WiFi calling and usually if I need a real SMS where Google Voice won't cut it, it can wait for WiFi...

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#175
post #159

Some of the comments pointed out that this is hostile behaviour for people roaming as well, and I completely agree. Here is my solution for this : When I am roaming internationally, I leave my SIM card in a spare android at home plugged into a charger. Android has an app that forwards SMS to API : https://f-droid.org/packages/tech.bogomolov.incomingsmsgatew... . Every time I receive a SMS I forward it to this API. Th…

I’m sorry how is this related to roaming?

I roam all the time in Europe and have roamed a lot outside of it, I have never had any trouble receiving any SMS?

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#176
Oh, this happens to me. I didn’t even realize that’s why I wasn’t receiving some sms codes, because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I live in a rural area and have spectrum for both wifi and mobile (just like the woman in the article). I have some cell service, but depending on how strong it is in any given day am usually relying on wifi for calling and sms.

SMS codes have been hit or miss, and this explains it well.

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not use my Google Voice number (that I've had since Grand Central) for most companies that only do SMS 2FA until it became my Google Fi number. Then I guess some flag got set in the database they check against.

>I could not use my Google Voice number (that I've had since Grand Central) for most companies that only do SMS 2FA until it became my Google Fi number. Then I guess some flag got set in the database they check against. I was wondering about that, because I can't get google voice because I have google fi, so clearly it's using the same bank of numbers, but maybe once they are fi, they are ported to T-mobile instead o…

They removed that restriction. You can have Fi and Voice on the same account now.

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#179

Perhaps there’s a B2C offering to be made here. An SMS proxy, forwarding 2FA codes to people without SMS. It would require a lot of trust. Similar and related discussions on this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43976359

Daito does this:

https://www.daito.io/2fa-via-sms/

Re: SMS 2FA is not just insecure, it's also hostile to mountain people

#180
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is absurd that the same companies that won’t allow 2FA with any other method outside of SMS are the same ones not sending to VoIP. Maybe they all go through a service for SMS that blocks it, but it still upsets me. It’s insane to me that maybe every bank I use requires SMS 2FA, but random services I use support apps.

I absolutely cannot stand that no bank I have (US) supports generic TOTP, which is more secure and easier to recover from backup if my phone is broken or stolen. It's inexcusable.

Although they don't offer TOTP, I've noticed growing support for Passkeys which is a step in the right direction.
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