‘hacked’. Eh. There was an API endpoint left open that allowed them to basically just spam it with no rate limiting. They used the lack of a rate limit to just pull the data out of the API that it was made to produce.
Yeah. They got data in a way that was not intended. That’s a hack. It’s not always about subverting something by clickity-clacking like in the movies.
Exploit. The system worked as intended, just without a rate limit. A hack would be relying on a vulnerability in the software to make it not function as programmed.
It’s the difference between finding a angle in a game world that causes your character to climb steeper than it should, vs rewriting memory locations to no-clip through everything. One causes the system to act in a way that it otherwise wouldn’t (SQL injections, etc) – the other, is using the system exactly as it was programmed.
Downloading videos from YouTube isn’t “Hacking” YouTube. Even though it’s using the API in a way it wasn’t intended. Right-clicking a webpage and viewing the source code isn’t hacking - even if the website you’re looking at doesn’t want you looking at the source.
Sure. Except you’re wrong and have absolutely idea of what people in this community say about things. Let me be a dick and literally googz this for you and find an embarassing answer because you couldn’t do it yourself.
A missing rate limit is a vulnerability, or a weakness, depending on the definition. You’re playing smart without having an idea of what you’re talking about. Here you go:
https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/799.html
YouTube videos are public, and as such it’s not really hacking. If you were able to download private videos, for example, it would be a vulnerability like “Improper Access Control”. It does not matter in the least whether you use an “exploit” in your definition (which is wrong) or “just increment the video ID”.
The result is a breach of confidentiality, and as such this is to be classified as a “hack”.
With due respect, you are wrong.
hack
…
- (transitive, slang, computing) To hack into; to gain unauthorized access to (a computer system, e.g., a website, or network) by manipulating code
Hacking means gaining unauthorized access to a computer system by manipulating or exploiting its code.
Exactly what this is. Read the disclosure. What about your response doesn’t fit that?
Hint – by manipulating or exploiting its code
Which I am explaining, they…did…not…do…
They did nothing to the code. They didn’t break the code, they didn’t cause the code to do anything it wasn’t designed to do. They did not exploit any code. They used an API endpoint that was in the open. For its intended purpose, to verify phone numbers. The api verified phone numbers, they verified phone numbers with the api. The only thing they did here…was they did verification on a lot of phone numbers.
Companies need to stop using Authy. It’s stupid and pointless when we have a open alternative such as the one used by Google Authenticator or Aegis.
I started using Authy instead of GA because every time I changed the ROM on my phone I would lose all codes, because I would forget every time.
Use aegis, export the keys and then reimport them every time you switch. Trusting your second factor to a cloud is a disaster waiting to happen.
If you want to get fancy setup your own cloud server (nextcloud, Seafile, owncloud etc) and set the backup folder for aegis to the self hosted cloud for easy restore every time you switch ROMs.
Simpler approach: auto export from aegis when an update occurs, syncthing or similar to your home PC. I have it synced across several computer in different locations and aegis is good enough to make unique filenames, combine with syncthing file history and I’m good for like 2 years of backups.
GA now backups your codes in your Google account, so this doesn’t happen anymore.
They had an obvious solution which is export to an encrypted text files and went with the option that lowers your security
I’ve started putting mine into my Bitwarden vault as well as Google auth, mainly because I’m a bit paranoid I’ll wind up locked out of something by trusting a second factor too much
With password recovery you shouldn’t be getting locked out of anything. I don’t see this being a risk.
I expect most usage of authy was based on the open TOTP protocol that Google etc use. The additional benefit was backing up those codes to the authy account, hence the avenue of attack on those accounts.
I agree though, Authy, especially since it was bought out, should be avoided. They deprecated their desktop app which was the only semi useful part of their suite, but I stopped using it years ago.
Red Shazam
Wow, it’s literally the shazam logo, flipped horizontally and red.
Wonder who got paid to make that logo?
I realized long time ago that I don’t want my 2FA be tied to my phone number. And then i found you can’t export your data from Authy because they know they are scummy fucks and don’t want to anyone to leave
You can, though. But not through their app. Someone reverse engineered their protocol and wrote a program that connects like a new client, which you then approve, and it dumps all your random seeds into a text file. I then put them all into Keepass.
Edit: Unfortunately, the author has deprecated the project as Authy has added some attestations to their API, seemingly for this exact issue. https://github.com/alexzorin/authy?tab=readme-ov-file
People keep acting like Authy is betraying them by not having an export feature, but why exactly are you leaving Authy to begin with? Because they are a security risk?
You’re gonna leave Authy a copy of your seeds? That defeats the purpose.
Re-key your MFA codes on the way out. Security isn’t necessarily convenient.
Use TOTP wherever possible. It’s standardized, and typically can be found somewhere if you keep digging hard enough.
Plenty of services push their own proprietary systems hard though. Looking at you M$
I also find this infuriating. I had a service offer TOTP for authentication. Installed an open source TOTP Aap, scanned the QR and voila.
The service meanwhile can control whether they want to generate a new token or give out the old one again, for instance when a device was lost.
It is the most easy, most convenient solution both for the service provider and the client. There is no excuse for any other 2FA system to be used.
then i found you can’t export your data from Authy
Exporting data from a 2FA app sounds like the opposite of secure. Not to mention you don’t want your 2FA codes on Authy (or any other 2FA app) to remain valid if you’re not using it.
When I switched from Google Authenticator to Authy years ago, I went through each 2FA-enabled account one by one to disable 2FA and then re-enable it using Authy. It’s a long process depending on how many accounts you have 2FA enabled on, but it’s worth it.
Reading the OP, looks like it’s time to generate new keys for all my 2FA accounts.
I used this method to export my twitch 2FA to Aegis. although I did this a few years ago, I think it still works
Edit: reading though comments made me realise Authy’s desktop app doesnt seem to be a thing anymore, so sadly I dont think it works anymore
Now that authy has fucked us over with this, what should I move my 2fa codes into, any recommendations?
Unfortunately I can’t use aegis on iOS/windows, does keepass have this functionality?
Just out of curiosity: is it wise to keep you MFA within your password safe? Like is that not the opposite of multi factor? I’m no troll, I’m seriously uninformed.
I suppose there is a certain level of risk but that’s true with any solution. Passwords generally don’t get changed very often and that’s usually what’s going to be nabbed up by somebody that in your username of course. With TOTP, putting that in bitwarden means that in order to get access to whatever account, they first have to get your credentials which they probably got from a dump filled with a bunch of other credentials, then I’d have to figure out that you’re using bitwarden was your be no sign that you are. Then they’d have to actually get into your bitwarden which if you’re doing it properly should be difficult. And if the login to bitwarden is completely different than the account are trying to get into it’s basically invisible to them.
The only way I see bitwarden being the weak link, is 1. Someone has physical access to your devices and they know what they’re looking for (in this case it’s probably a roommate or family or friend, someone that you trust but probably shouldn’t). 2. Bitwarden gets compromised (which is an impossible but it is probably more difficult because it is an open source thing). 3. You go to shady website and install shady stuff and that install some sort of keylogger, or something else that shows what your system has (hell, Microsoft recall would actually fall into this category) and a back actor sees that you have bitwarden and how you log into it. But that being said, 1 and 3 aren’t necessarily stopped by having a password manager solution and the separate MFA solution… But it could slow them down.
But physical MFA isn’t impervious either. I don’t recall if it was yubiki or Google’s Titan, if I remember back years ago one of them had a problem.
These are not local solutions, but are cross-platform and open source: Bitwarden or Proton Pass.
You’ve got a good point. I wonder if this an example of a trade-off between convenience and security. If you’re logging in and you get an MFA prompt, a Yubikey has to be physically searched, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass only have to be clicked. A Yubikey can only hold a limited amount of accounts, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass could hold many more. Of course, a Yubikey could be used as MFA for Bitwarden or Proton Pass, but that would create a single point of failure and reduce factor separation (which I think is your original point).
While I posted a Bitwarden or Proton Pass recommendation of sorts, I genuinely wonder if it’s advisable to not use MFA at all if the factors will not be separated. Or, perhaps, the best security solution is the one you’ll actually use. I guess the answer is the good ol’ “What’s your security model?”
Most KeePass clones have it now, i use Keepass2Android plus KeePassX on PC
I like 1Password’s built in MFA support, if it’s a really sensitive account I use Google Authenticator because I haven’t bothered researching better local alternative
Edit: Going to try Aegis for the more sensitive logins, looks like what I’m looking for
Possibly not now that it saves your codes to your google account (it didn’t use to), but it made me uncomfortable for my password manager to have both factors together to log into something like my bank or root AWS account. So you’d have to compromise two different places to get in
https://news.itsfoss.com/ente-auth/
I use this on my windows machines, offline , has biometrics, supports export and import from aegis. Is new and untested but past few months have been solid.
Yup it’s pretty good, although I would’ve liked it better if they provided a good way to export the data to another app
Buy a few (at least 2 for a backup) yubikeys.
Much more secure.
You can store the TOPT codes on them, but then you can also do all the higher security things too.
No one’s breaking into your Google account if you secure it with those keys and remove the sms backup method unless they’ve physically stolen the yubikey
