Transcript
A wafrn woot (post) by @tinker@infosec.exchange saying “Microsoft Authenticator needs me to validate with Authenticator in order to log in with Authenticator to use it to authenticate another app with Authenticator. Here is the app telling me to open itself to validate itself with itself. #infosec #iHateComputers” It has a screenshot showing the microsoft authenticator app.
Perfect Security. Nobody gets in.
False positives are way more important to prevent than false negatives anyways.
This is why I hate passkeys and authenticators (as mandatory requirements). The moment I lose my phone I’m just completely fucked with no recourse, in actual use case.
You’re supposed to have backups for MFA. Though for passkeys (specifically ones for yubikey) are really hard to backup.
I am not always going to remember to register my primary yubikey and my two backups that are physically never together.
I use andOTP for two factor authentication. It’s free and open source, and available from the F-Droid app store. It allows you to backup your cryptographic keys in plaintext, with a password, or asymmetrically encrypted using OpenPGP. I keep my backups in a fireproof safe on two flash drives.
Pretty sure you have another device registered with Authenticator here, and it is asking you to verify against that.
It would be bad if somebody could just steal your username/password and then register their own MFA, right?
thanks for claryfing that, it makes the post really dumb
Nothing says Microsoft like a bit of janky paradox.
Yo dawg…
Authentinception
I had an issue with this a few weeks ago, my old phone the charging port broke and I couldn’t get back into it. On my new phone it needed me to use the authenticator to log in to the authenticator. Made it my uni’s problem to solve the authenticator paradox
It’s a security feature.
If it was easy to get into without the authenticator, then it would be useless.
Usually a simple fix on their end. Verify something like your school ID, go to the O365 admin portal remove the old phone (don’t have to) and send out a QR code to scan on the new phone. Depending on security measures you can assign a sms message code but many insurance companies have made requirements to phase those out. Sucks, because I liked those better, but I guess risk analysis was higher with them.
One thing I did notice though was tokens in the authenticator app would carry over to new phones, where RSA securID tokens usually would not because they were tied to an ID number on the device. But those are just as easy to manage, but they will definitely piss people off. Now the Comp Portal app in government contracts, those are a bitch. You can spend an hour redoing everything just because a user forgot their password and all the apps aren’t linking the authenticator token with the portal.
The steam app does this. Like, not in a fucked up useless way, but it still requires that you authenticate with its own pop up.
*laughs in Okta*I had Google fi. One time I got a new phone. Went to switch service to the new pixel. Moving service deactivate service on my old phone. Couldn’t sing in to Google Fi to activate my new service until I entered the code they texted me.
