Twitter is having intermittent problems with its two-factor authentication system: Not all users are having problems receiving SMS authentication codes, and those who rely on an authenticator app or physical authentication token to secure their Twitter account may not have reason to test the mechanism. But users have been self-reporting issues on Twitter since the … Read More “Failures in Twitter’s Two-Factor Authentication System” »
Category: passwords
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Researchers have used thermal cameras and ML guessing techniques to recover passwords from measuring the residual heat left by fingers on keyboards. From the abstract: We detail the implementation of ThermoSecure and make a dataset of 1,500 thermal images of keyboards with heat traces resulting from input publicly available. Our first study shows that ThermoSecure … Read More “Recovering Passwords by Measuring Residual Heat” »
Sometimes browser spellcheckers leak passwords: When using major web browsers like Chrome and Edge, your form data is transmitted to Google and Microsoft, respectively, should enhanced spellcheck features be enabled. Depending on the website you visit, the form data may itself include PII—including but not limited to Social Security Numbers (SSNs)/Social Insurance Numbers (SINs), name, … Read More “Leaking Passwords through the Spellchecker” »
Thought experiment story of someone who lost everything in a house fire, and now can’t log into anything: But to get into my cloud, I need my password and 2FA. And even if I could convince the cloud provider to bypass that and let me in, the backup is secured with a password which is … Read More “When Security Locks You Out of Everything” »
These techniques are not new, but they’re increasingly popular: …some forms of MFA are stronger than others, and recent events show that these weaker forms aren’t much of a hurdle for some hackers to clear. In the past few months, suspected script kiddies like the Lapsus$ data extortion gang and elite Russian-state threat actors (like … Read More “Bypassing Two-Factor Authentication” »
Oops: Instead of telling you when it’s safe to cross the street, the walk signs in Crystal City, VA are just repeating ‘CHANGE PASSWORD.’ Something’s gone terribly wrong here. Powered by WPeMatico
A vulnerability (just patched) in the random number generator used in the Kaspersky Password Manager resulted in easily guessable passwords: The password generator included in Kaspersky Password Manager had several problems. The most critical one is that it used a PRNG not suited for cryptographic purposes. Its single source of entropy was the current time. … Read More “Vulnerability in the Kaspersky Password Manager” »
DiceKeys is a physical mechanism for creating and storing a 192-bit key. The idea is that you roll a special set of twenty-five dice, put them into a plastic jig, and then use an app to convert those dice into a key. You can then use that key for a variety of purposes, and regenerate … Read More “DiceKeys” »
It is amazing that this sort of thing can still happen: …the list was compiled by scanning the entire internet for devices that were exposing their Telnet port. The hacker then tried using (1) factory-set default usernames and passwords, or (2) custom, but easy-to-guess password combinations. Telnet? Default passwords? In 2020? We have a long … Read More “Half a Million IoT Passwords Leaked” »
This study shows that most people don’t change their passwords after a breach, and if they do they change it to a weaker password. Abstract: To protect against misuse of passwords compromised in a breach, consumers should promptly change affected passwords and any similar passwords on other accounts. Ideally, affected companies should strongly encourage this … Read More “Password Changing After a Breach” »