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Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

ccc.de

281–290 of 323 posts

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero reason for ad companies or ad networks to be covered by any safe harbor provisions of the law. They should have 100% criminal liability for every mal-advertisement they send to a user.

Ads are a paid transaction and Ad Companies absolutely need to be held liable for the money that they take because of who they take it from voluntarily . Google should be ashamed at all the money they are making from scammers and criminals and other evils. They should have a terrible score at every agency remotely like the Better Business Bureau. They should be tarred and feathered in public opinion. The brand name s…

> Google should be ashamed at all the money they are making from scammers and criminals and other evils.

Yes, and so should every person that works for them.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#282
post #162
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are rare but do exist, see ethicalads and Modrinth’s ad program

They are still third-party ad networks that require a browser to cross multiple domains, etc. etc. etc. I am not ideologically opposed to advertisements but I do believe the only safe ads are first party hosted coming from the same domain.

Modrinth’s ads are this way.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#283
post #134
post #42

A family friend of ours recently fell victim to a phishing attack perpetrated by an attacker who paid for Google Ads for a search term like "BANKNAME login". The site was an immaculate knock off, with a replay attack in the background. She entered her 2fa code from the app on her phone but the interface rejected the code and asked her for another one. In the background, this 2nd code was actually to authorise the add…

Was this in the US or elsewhere, what was the amount and how long did it take to notice? Just curious. In the US the bar to pull money out of an account is pretty low. Most banks would allow reasonably-sized transfers out with just routing and account numbers. I was stunned by this, but this is the reason utilities and stores can pull your money without you even talking to your bank. Just give them the info. And that…

> Was this in the US or elsewhere, what was the amount and how long did it take to notice? Just curious.

It was in Australia, amount was thousands of dollars, she noticed when she was asked to enter yet another code and all of a sudden it made her snap out of her "autopilot" and take notice and look at the URL and other details. So as soon as she realised that something was fishy, she logged into the correct site, then saw the money was gone.

> In the US the bar to pull money out of an account is pretty low. Most banks would allow reasonably-sized transfers out with just routing and account numbers. I was stunned by this, but this is the reason utilities and stores can pull your money without you even talking to your bank. Just give them the info. And that information is not secret, it is printed on your every check. The flip size is that for those "convenience" and service payments the money is easy to get back: banks, at least traditional, will bend over backwards to prevent being seen as enabling fraud.

This was a "pay anyone" transfer. So money was being transferred to a bank by BSB/Account number in the background. The bank required a code when a new Payee is added, but the codes were not differentiated, so she was asked for a code to login, then told the code was wrong and asked for another code. In the background the real banking site to which her actions were being replaced had successfully logged in and had initiated a transfer to a new Payee. The real banking site asked the attackers for a code to add the new Payee, the fake banking site asked her for a new code to login.

The thing that really enabled the attack is that the same code generator was used for both codes, without any indication that a different action was being performed.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#284
post #223
post #42

A family friend of ours recently fell victim to a phishing attack perpetrated by an attacker who paid for Google Ads for a search term like "BANKNAME login". The site was an immaculate knock off, with a replay attack in the background. She entered her 2fa code from the app on her phone but the interface rejected the code and asked her for another one. In the background, this 2nd code was actually to authorise the add…

Your solution wouldn’t have prevented the attack you describe unless the user can immediately tell the difference between login 2FA codes and “new payee” 2FA codes and knows not to enter one code into the wrong form.

Well, that's what I'm saying. When I get an SMS from one of my banks for example it says "your code to transfer X to Y is ABC" or "Your code to add a new payee is ABC". In this case she had a code generating app, but the codes were not different for login versus other high risk actions. The same is true for my other bank, which has a code which you use to login, and the same code generator, with no distinction, is used for example when you make a large BPay transaction.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#285
post #42

A family friend of ours recently fell victim to a phishing attack perpetrated by an attacker who paid for Google Ads for a search term like "BANKNAME login". The site was an immaculate knock off, with a replay attack in the background. She entered her 2fa code from the app on her phone but the interface rejected the code and asked her for another one. In the background, this 2nd code was actually to authorise the add…

"...with a replay attack in the background." Wouldn't this be MITM?

I called this a "replay attack" because it sounds more like this:

"A replay attack in a network communications setting involves intercepting a successful authentication process—often using a valid session token that gives a particular user access to the network—and replaying that authentication to the network to gain access"

Even though this wasn't a session token, it was an authentication process and token, gathered from a fraudlent source and replayed to a valid source.

MITM is:

"A man in the middle (MITM) attack is a general term for when a perpetrator positions himself in a conversation between a user and an application—either to eavesdrop or to impersonate one of the parties, making it appear as if a normal exchange of information is underway."

So to me a MITM would be more like using a wifi access point to access the correct banking URL, but the service carrying the data was acting maliciously.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#286
post #148
post #42

A family friend of ours recently fell victim to a phishing attack perpetrated by an attacker who paid for Google Ads for a search term like "BANKNAME login". The site was an immaculate knock off, with a replay attack in the background. She entered her 2fa code from the app on her phone but the interface rejected the code and asked her for another one. In the background, this 2nd code was actually to authorise the add…

I'm curious if the different SMS message would have mattered in practice. I for one don't ever read those messages, and Android at least will usually copy the code for you making them even easier to ignore.

I read those messages. The ones from one of my banks that uses SMS and differentiates them, says "your code to do BLAH is BLAH". I was actually saved from phishing once because my credit card company included the vendor and the amount in the transaction SMS and it was for a different site and a much larger amount than what I thought I was spending.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perspectives and interests of NIST and the things that a service provider has has to worry about with respect to their customer/user experience are not necessarily aligned. Customer: "What do you mean two factor app? I thought the code was supposed to come to my phone?" Support: "It did, but we no longer support SMS two factor authentication." Customer: "But I had no problems when the code came to my phone." Supp…

> Customer: "But I had no problems when the code came to my phone." "Unfortunately, many of our other customers, and customers of other financial institutions were not correctly protected by the code alone.. and were still getting scammed or confused.. and losing _all_ their money." > Customer: "[...] I'm finding this very frustrating, I need to get into my account." "That is understandable, but we take the security…

It is very much software-world-thinking to believe that dismissive Kafkaesque responses that just shut down the conversation without addressing the fundamental issues around usability and customer satisfaction will ameliorate the situation.

For a lot of service based businesses they see their customers face to face and it is imperative that the customers have a seamless experience. Imagine having a business where customers who can't sign into some online system you have are bringing in old Android phones and wanting help from your staff members on how to get 2FA set up on those devices and it is easy to understand why many such businesses settle on SMS based 2FA.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is zero reason for ad companies or ad networks to be covered by any safe harbor provisions of the law. They should have 100% criminal liability for every mal-advertisement they send to a user.

They don't. DMCA safe-harbor covers copyright violations. All it takes is a prosecutor willing to use the CFAA to hold business as accountable as people.

> DMCA safe-harbor covers copyright violations.

That's true, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 provides broader (but not unlimited) immunity for user submitted content.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#289
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people publishing a website either cannot or do not care to host the ad server on the same domain, they just want to monetize the site. That's sort of beside the point, though. The site owner's commitment to running ads is useless unless there are people to view them, and, as long as unsafe ads are ubiquitous, the only safe advice to give to people is that they should run ad blockers everywhere. It doesn't mat…

there are plenty of site owners that would voluntarily choose a more ethical ad hosting network if it was a good and easy option. adding a pain-in-the-ass hurdle like "has to be hosted on the same domain" that 99.99% of people won't see the value of or understand is only going to hurt adoption of the better solutions.

> adding a pain-in-the-ass hurdle like "has to be hosted on the same domain" that 99.99% of people won't see the value of or understand is only going to hurt adoption of the better solutions.

Right, but that's my point—this is not a situation where visitors have to hope that site owners will be responsive to their preferences; rather, visitors are in a position to enforce their preferences via ad blockers, so there's no incentive for them to compromise on matters that, however poorly appreciated or understood, genuinely can affect security.

Re: Second factor SMS: Worse than its reputation

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Customer: "But I had no problems when the code came to my phone." "Unfortunately, many of our other customers, and customers of other financial institutions were not correctly protected by the code alone.. and were still getting scammed or confused.. and losing _all_ their money." > Customer: "[...] I'm finding this very frustrating, I need to get into my account." "That is understandable, but we take the security…

It is very much software-world-thinking to believe that dismissive Kafkaesque responses that just shut down the conversation without addressing the fundamental issues around usability and customer satisfaction will ameliorate the situation. For a lot of service based businesses they see their customers face to face and it is imperative that the customers have a seamless experience. Imagine having a business where cus…

"We face this. It's about 5% of users. Our margins are large enough we don't worry about this segment. They need our service more than we need them."

- Any Large Bank Anywhere

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