It's still better than no 2FA, which I imagine is the alternative for the vast majority of people.

I would assume this depends on the nature of your account.

On most of my accounts the probability * cost of getting hacked is much smaller than the probability * cost of loosing access.

Meta: Why is it that in one thread, I'm saying "same-machine 2fa is better than no 2fa" and getting "but but it's not secure!" as replies, but when I complain about sms auth being insecure, impractical, nonstandard and more expensive than TOTP I'm getting "it's still better than 2fa" as a reply?

Different people are responding to those threads, and those different people have different opinions?

I agree, it is bizarre to be taking different sides of the argument in different threads...

I want to call this out, because I feel it's a big issue we have as humans trying to engage in reasoned debate - the idea that an inconsistent or changing view is somehow "weak" or invalidates the argument.

If someone is changing their opinion, that's a good thing. It means they are taking on board new information and not blindly following their original opinion.

If someone appears to have an inconsistent view, perhaps their position is simply more nuanced than the simple "for or against" buckets the debate actively tries to lump all participants into?

Yeah, I was sarcastically pointing out the absurdity of bitching about different people on HN having different responses whilst he himself has slightly different perspectives on subtly different issues...

I don't care that his view is inconsistent, I just think the complaint of people disagreeing with him (in a comment format which encourages disagreement more than agreement) was kinda ridiculous :)

The point I was (clearly too subtly) trying to make is that if you're going to use an imperfect solution in the name of getting it in the hands of more users, you might as well use TOTP and make concessions - it can be more accessible than SMS auth, which has so many problems attached to it, it's hard to understand why it's getting defended on HN anymore.

> Nevermind Google Authenticator. Android and iOS should have a high quality TOTP app installed by default.

True, Red Hat has made FreeOTP which is available for Android and iOS and works really well.

Also, Microsoft Authenticator is already on every platform and getting even better on every platform soon. I know it would freak a lot of people out to have an app with the M-word in the name, but it's a good, solid TOTP app.

Is it open-source under GPL and immune to patent suits? Lock-in, EOL's, and lawsuits are biggest risk Microsoft poses. If they GPL'd it, then Microsoft being the source probably doesn't matter.

It's OATH/IETF standards compliant, which mitigates (if not removes) risk from lock-in and EOL's, thanks to industry standards. [1]

I don't think Microsoft is patent suit immune, but they are certainly capable of handling patent suits without disrupting user capabilities/security. Unless you are suggesting Microsoft owns patents in using the standards and somehow might sue users over that, but both OATH and IETF have patent grants in place regarding the standards.

Open source under any particular license (esp. and inc. the GPL) is orthogonal to it being immune to patent suits and/or lock-in/EOL. It's also orthogonal to security and/or privacy you can have secure apps both with and without open source. Certainly there are reasons where technically inclined users would prefer to have access to the source, but within the larger context of this discussion where the question is if there is an app available in any app store that matters that you could point a non-technically inclined friend/relative to, Microsoft Authenticator is one option and whether or not it is open source, it's still a better cross-platform option than SMS (and Google Authenticator which isn't as cross-platform, but has as many risks as you mention here as Microsoft's option).

[1] https://openauthentication.org/specifications-technical-reso...

"Unless you are suggesting Microsoft owns patents in using the standards and somehow might sue users over that, but both OATH and IETF have patent grants in place regarding the standards."

Exactly what I'm suggesting. Both Microsoft and IBM regularly file plenty of patents pertaining to about anything they create. They also regularly sue companies over them with Android alone producing hundreds of millions in revenue from such suits. So, one shouldn't use anything from Microsoft that might need to be cloned or ported later unless having a copyright and/or patent license. The risk with them is too high.

"Open source under any particular license (esp. and inc. the GPL) is orthogonal to it being immune to patent suits and/or lock-in/EOL."

A number of OSS licenses specifically include a patent license for use of that tech. It's implied by GPL for forks, too, which is not the case for OSS clones of a closed but free product. So, it's not orthogonal but directly involved via creation of patent licenses & protection of forks. It eliminates a good chunk of the type of liability that Microsoft likes to create.

"It's also orthogonal to security and/or privacy you can have secure apps both with and without open source."

I've made the claim myself & my background in high-assurance security lets me know the difference. This app isn't high-security or evaluated to it by any trusted party. So, we have to assume it's not secure by default like anything else. Nonetheless, this tangent doesn't matter at all to my point that Microsoft + closed-source offering poses risks that Microsoft + GPL offering don't. And that Microsoft makes such risks real for companies often enough for it to matter.

"it's still a better cross-platform option than SMS (and Google Authenticator which isn't as cross-platform, but has as many risks as you mention here as Microsoft's option)."

I don't use these products at all. So, I can't evaluate their features, UX, portability, etc. I'll take your word for it as a user that it might do a good job or offer advantages. My starting point based on comments here would probably be FreeOTP as it's free, open-source, and Apache includes patent provisions. I can imagine it not having Microsoft or Google's features to point I'd use them for overall cost-benefit analysis but I'd certainly have fall-back option.

The applicable tech is already under a patent license (see OATH and IETF documentation). The IETF patent literature seems particularly strong and particularly binding. (Which is good because a lot of the internet relies on IETF standards.) There's no greater risk with a Microsoft option than a Google option; it's open standards and all the options interoperate (regardless of what Google and other TOTP and HOTP apps have accidentally and intentionally told people and what confusion exists about the technology in general).

FreeOTP looks like a good option. It doesn't support every platform yet, and it doesn't have a mainstream recognizable brand name. Yes, it's a great fall-back option, though, for folks that want to "graduate" from the Google/Microsoft/other options.

I am just pointing out that of the mainstream brands that the public in general knows (and trusts to any degree) Microsoft's option has the best cross-platform reach and is the easiest to find in the respective app stores. That carries a lot of weight in getting a security feature that everyone should be using into more hands. I realize a lot of technical folks are still highly suspicious of Microsoft and feel there is a lot of risk in Microsoft's name.

Yes, it would be better if it were open source, but it is patent unencumbered, as much so as open standards typically get. I realize it might not be your preferred option. I was hoping, however, to point out to people that is a good option (not a perfect one, but a good one) to spread the gospel of Real Two-Factor Authentication.

(«I don't use these products at all.» You probably should be using at least one by now, if not several. OATH TOTP (RFC 6238) and OATH HOTP (RFC 4226) are the best options we have right now for Real Two-Factor...)

"The applicable tech is already under a patent license (see OATH and IETF documentation)."

There's patents that cover a specific tech, for its uses, for underlying mechanisms, and for vague extensions. These are the risky types that show up the most with most of it obvious to point it shouldn't be patented. Expensive to fight, though. Microsoft goes for all three. So, either IETF would have to own patents for all use cases and underlying techs or Microsoft would have to issue patent license for all such categories if they have any. A patent license for the whole product to be used or cloned however, as in the open licenses, is still safer.

"There's no greater risk with a Microsoft option than a Google option"

Unbelievable. You've looked at the court histories to find that Microsoft and Google have caused about equal damage to companies with patent suits, lock-in, or obsoleting core products. They haven't. Google doesn't even compare, esp the billions Microsoft extracted with legal suits, except on encouraging lockin where Google at least stays ahead of most competition in terms of capabilities instead of stagnating. Virtually no comparison in actual damage done although I'll concede Google is becoming more like Microsoft every day in terms of sneakiness & lock-in strategies.

" I realize a lot of technical folks are still highly suspicious of Microsoft"

You should try the non-technical folks who've been burned by them with Windows activation failures, forced upgrades of hardware, forced ads on their paid Xbox Live, BSA developing snitches in organization, licensing schemes, lawsuits over nonsense patents, and so on. You don't have to be technical to be suspicious of an organization that pulls as much BS as Microsoft. I've met many non-technical people using Mac's (or enterprise Linux) because they didn't want the trouble of dealing with Windows or Microsoft. Worst horror stories I hear from Apple users in terms of company are the "Apple tax" and issues with non-Apple hardware. Also the PPC to Intel transition at one point. Collectively not in same ballpark as Microsoft's behavior, esp in financial risk.

"Microsoft's option has the best cross-platform reach and is the easiest to find in the respective app stores."

This could be true. Again, if it's usable, better than others, and you can avoid lock-in, then sure go for it as it's best option. Also, go for it if others are so bad they wouldn't use them anyway. Better than nothing. These are potential use-cases.

"You probably should be using at least one by now, if not several. "

It usually means they hit two targets instead of one. My opponents can do that. I just don't trust the accounts at all. I assume my machine is compromised then work from there. Far as riff raff, I use a Linux desktop, update my software, secure the wireless, make randomish passwords, and so on. I could improve it but the few times I've had to change something was when online service itself was compromised. Yahoo and LinkedIn being only ones I know recently. I'm not saying other people shouldn't do it necessarily but little benefit for me given threat profile.

OTOH it's much better if you're authorizing single operations.

My bank in Poland has a scheme where it sends me a one time password together with some details on every mutating operation I do (e.g. on a transfer it sends the amount and account number of the target account).

Then you travel to a country where your mobile provider isn't working and all of a sudden you can't buy an airline ticket. SMS verification is also a terrible user experience.

All banks in Sweden have a similar scheme. It sends a token and a description to your phone on any mutating or authenticating operation, you input your code, and it signs the token and sends it back to the bank.

The BankID app? Most banks also have hardware TOTP tokens.

True, most banks have both. But the hardware tokens seem to be dying, slowly.

Personally I consider the transaction description a pretty killer feature of Mobilt BankID compared to the hardware tokens.

I know I can backup the contents of Google Authenticator on iOS if I perform iTunes backups with the "Encrypt backup" option checked. I'd wager that many who are backing up their phones don't have this checked, and don't realize if they have to restore their phone that the gAuth app will pretend you just installed it from scratch with no codes.

I'm not sure what the backup situation is with Android.

I've started backing up the actual strings that the app uses to generate the codes in an encrypted vault. You usually have to manually have these strings shown to you in lieu of a QR code. While creating another avenue for someone to hack you, at least I have a backup as well as a way to add a second device go show me codes. This is definitely beyond the capacity of the average user.

I think there might be online services that handle keeping codes for you? Like you can install an app on your phone, log into an account, and it presents you with all of your codes. Anyone have a recommendation for one of these that works well for them?

A lot of services also provide backup codes when you perform first setup. If you actually take those and put them in a safe place (maybe offline) like they say, that should mitigate a lot of the problems.

Let's pretend I'm a dummy user and I print all my backup codes out and throw them in a drawer somewhere. Now the only situation that locks me out of my account is both my home becoming damaged/unavailable AND my phone at the same time.

While a house fire or something could reasonably accomplish both (although I imagine most people would grab their phone before running out!), I think this reduces the risk to a point well below the "I dropped my phone in the toilet." level of not having backup codes.

> legally requires a passport/national ID tied to the phone number

Some may consider that a feature rather than a bug.

some also welcome fascism. heck, back home some still say the time with a dictatorship was better because there were no buns on the streets.

> Forgot to disable 2fa on that one account you log into once a year, before changing your phone number? have fun with that

It's even worse because with offline 2fa. Just reinstalling the phone means loosing the secret keys. I know it's possible to back them up but nobody does that.

> I know it's possible to back them up but nobody does that

Yeah that is a problem and that's why I'm arguing a high quality TOTP client should be shipped out of the box with Android/iOS and be synced with the Google/Apple account by default. A lot of the friction and backup issues would disappear.

but if TOTP is sync'd on with your google account, and you reinstall your phone... How do you do the first android login after reinstall, when you lost the TOTP ? Chicken and egg problem inbound ^^.

Permanent backup codes are a thing. You can generate those at any time. It's a UX problem, not a technical one.

I'm intrigued. The problem: you want to secure your access codes. The solution you appear to be proposing: permanent backup of your security codes somewhere.

But... how do you authenticate to this backup of your codes? It can't be through the same method that these codes unlock for you. Right?

> It can't be through the same method that these codes unlock for you. Right?

That depends who you're warding against. Any attacker sufficiently motivated has access to everything you have access to, so in theory, nothing is safe. If you're warding against MITM for example, logging in with an OTP code is enough, you don't even need a password. If you're warding against malware, then the OTP seed should be on a different (airgapped) machine. In both those scenarios, assuming you don't have a webcam, a post-it note with your backup codes is sufficient.

But yes, ideally the codes should be on a different machine, or at the very least in a different safe (eg. two separate KDBs with a different passphrase). And to answer your other comment, yes, they'll usually be safer on paper under your mattress.

Print them on paper and store them in a drawer in your house. That way it's legally protected more strongly and is immune to hacking.

Have we really resorted to "hide it under your mattress" as the best we can do for security?

For last chance backup it's a great way to handle it.

I have a waterproof, fire resistant chest that important papers live in. In the event of a disaster like a house fire, where my phone and tokens would likely be destroyed, it's a "Plan B" option. In the event of an accident or other event that results in my untimely demise, my wife or other loved ones can also access that chest and get backup credentials to access accounts with critical information.

The other nice thing about the analog world is that the legal path is well worn and understood. An online, service-based resource could be shutdown at any time and custodial disputes are either impossible or driven by some arbitration process on the West coast (I live on the east coast). Accesses to physical goods is clearer, and disputes get resolved by a local judge.

Excellent points. I'll add that physical safes and human-level protections have been standard in INFOSEC since Schell et al invented it as a formal field. All the early SCM for high-assurance systems was basically safes, locked rooms, and vetted people. Black programs (SAP's), like NIPSOM manual, also depend on such methods at some point.

Cool thing is that there's less laws of physics trying to break your security model if you take transistors, wires, and wireless comms out of your implementation. Paper without a line of sight has excellent security properties against remote attackers. :)

Note: Your point on the legal angle is wise and rarely made. I probably need to bring it up more often myself with these ridiculous rulings on privacy & data protection.

For awhile I ran a really large email system for an enterprise with lots of different lines of business -- right after the change in Federal rules of civil procedure that made email the best place to hunt for evidence in litigation. At the same time, we were working with archivists on some of the issues around preserving documents -- the ODF vs Microsoft format thing was a hot item at the time.

That really opened my eyes to the often ignored downsides of electronic media. In the US, we have constitutional protections around our "papers" in our homes, but third party doctrine dramatically weakens the protections around all sorts of things.

I don't get it. Many people don't use a smartphone at all, and anyway smartphones are much less secure than ordinary mobile phones (w.r.t. criminals), so this seems even less reasonable than requiring the SMS-based method for sensitive operations like confirming money transfers when online banking.

In fact, you should use a dumb phone for SMS-tokens if you want be on the safe side. (It would make more sense if the vast majority of Android phones wasn't insecure due to running an old OS with no updates, but that's not the case.)

>in some countries, that legally requires a passport/national ID tied to the phone number

Isn't that BETTER compared to anybody getting a phone number and using it to hack into your 2FA account?

>-Offers no means of backup*

That has nothing to do with SMS for 2FA. There are websites using SMS for 2FA that DO offer a backup way to authenticate in case you have an issue with your phone.

- Forgot to disable 2fa on that one account you log into once a year, before changing your phone number? have fun with that

> Isn't that BETTER compared to anybody getting a phone number and using it to hack into your 2FA account?

Huh? Are we talking about the same thing?

> There are websites using SMS for 2FA that DO offer a backup way to authenticate in case you have an issue with your phone.

A backup is not the same thing as a master key (even if we call those "backup codes"). I'll grant you that those are usually enough.

>Huh? Are we talking about the same thing?

What I'm saying is that a potential attacker that might divert PINs to their mobile phone, would at least have to be registered to get that phone account in the first place.

I want ubiquitous support for U2F / UAF, which would probably be the easiest solution.

That will probably in the form of Web Authentication API (https://w3c.github.io/webauthn/) which started out as version 2.0 of the FIDO specifications.

Microsoft will release prefixed support of the draft spec in Edge in the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary update on August 2: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/04/12/a-world-witho...

How would that work with multiple devices? If the private key is stored in a TPM on the machine you used to register, then you can only ever use that device, or you have to go through some process to add additional devices.

How does backing up your keys in a server somewhere is better than SMS auth?

It's not, most likely. A working 2-factor scheme needs two devices and communication channels to the end user that are completely independent of each other.

If your mobile phone links to an account somewhere (e.g. Google account) that you can also access from the other device (e.g. a PC), and security-related settings can be changed from the other device, too, then that's insecure out-of-the-box.

You can encrypt them. I have no control over the idiots at my telecom who will reroute my number for anyone who provides the correct answer to some easy 'security questions'.

I see what you mean but if you encrypt them you will end up with an extra encryption key... that you'll need to store somewhere else.. otherwise, holding just an encryption passphrase is pointless as it's just the same as having two login passwords.