• shortwavesurfer
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    11 hours ago

    Idiot. Why did they not run those searches over the tor network to anonymize themselves? That is quite frankly stupid. And the fact that the SEC was using SMS-based two-factor authentication is also stupid. One time pads or bust motherfuckers.

    • cacheson@piefed.social
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      9 hours ago

      One time pads or bust motherfuckers.

      Not sure if you’re being facetious, but one time pads are for encryption, not authentication. They’re also impractical (and overkill) for most purposes.

        • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          They’re actually not, they’re algorithmically derived state machines, most are public key hashes of secrets concatenated to the current time in seconds from the epoch.

          Ideally they would be otp, but that would also be obnoxious.

          • shortwavesurfer
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            9 hours ago

            Oh, interesting. Okay. In that case, they are totally misusing the term.

            • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              Yeah, I think it’s because that’s where the model originated, and that’s basically what it’s supposed to be, but having almost everyone synchronized on time gives us a new trick because we can just generate ‘keys’ and have them expire, so even if you manage to get one by force, it’s only valid a short window. Instead of one time pad they often call them one time passwords.

              You need extended access to a generator over time to be able to use it, which gives the user a chance to report it for invalidation.

              Not perfect, but it does its job fine especially compared to passwords or sms (where you’re at the mercy of the minimum wage kid down at the mall’s Verizon kiosk).

        • cacheson@piefed.social
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          8 hours ago

          Ah, gotcha. Those are one-time passwords. Same acronym, so it’s easy to confuse them.

          But yeah, I agree that everything should use (T)OTP for two-factor authentication, instead of SMS messages. The later mainly provides a false sense of security and presents only a minor hurdle for attackers to overcome.

      • shortwavesurfer
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        10 hours ago

        Well then again, you expect government agencies to be secure? Yeah, not hardly.