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Why Do Companies Not Use Existing 2FA Standards? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by kill_dash_nine@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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This is something I am seeing more and more of. As companies start to either offer or require 2FA for accounts, they don't follow the common standards or even offer any sort of options. One thing that drives me nuts is when they don't offer TOTP as an option. It seems like many companies either use text messages to send a code or use some built in method of authorizing a sign in from a mobile device app.

What are your thoughts on why they want to take the time to maintain this extra feature in an app when you could have just implemented a TOTP method that probably can be imported as an existing library with much less effort?

Are they assuming that people are too dumb to understand TOTP? Are they wanting phone numbers from people? Is it to force people to install their apps?

*edit: I also really want to know what not at least give people the option to choose something like TOTP. They can still offer mobile app verification, SMS, email, carrier pigeon, etc for other options but at least give the user a choice of something besides an insecure method like SMS.

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[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The email protocol, SMTP, was originally not designed with encrypting content in mind. Encryption was added years later, but as an option that is negotiated between mail servers.

While large email providers like Gmail, outlook, etc. likely all support encryption as best as they can, all it takes is one misconfigured server, etc. to cause emails to be sent in clear text at least part of the way from location to another.

It’s largely for that reason why a lot of people & organizations don’t trust email to be secure unless you use mail clients that encrypt and decrypt mail at both ends. But that’s a PITA to set up properly and manage.

If your email is sent entirely within an ecosystem like Gmail then it’s likely encrypted the entire time. But as soon as it passes outside of Gmail to another organization there’s no guarantee it’s still secure. These days it probably is, as virtually every reputable internet provider & company is going to take the issue seriously, but there’s still the history of SMTP not being encrypted that haunts those in the security fields.

[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

SMS has the same problem though. It's only marginally safer because the tools to hijack a cellular session are a bit more complicated to use, but they are widely available and you can find plenty of instructions online on how to use maybe $3k worth of equipment to spoof a GSM base station and force a target device onto it. Hell, in some cases you don't even have to force the target device onto your rogue ENB - you can just jam the phone and hijack the number through your own SIP gateway if you get the timing right.