I was going to use that as a plus, as I have now had to switch phones twice, and re-setting up my GA 2FA sites on the new phone was a major PITA - I thought Authy would make that easier, but now I guess that feature could be an attack vector too?
I was going to use that as a plus, as I have now had to switch phones twice, and re-setting up my GA 2FA sites on the new phone was a major PITA - I thought Authy would make that easier, but now I guess that feature could be an attack vector too?
https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223182508-Authy...
This should be the default really.
I thought the main difference was that the 2FA service details were saved in the cloud so you could sync up to multiple mobile devices using the Authy app?
I'd recommend disabling multi-device support which is enabled by default or adding a backup/restore prassphrase to make it more difficult to add new devices without also cracking the prassphrase.
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7
http://thehackernews.com/2017/05/ss7-vulnerability-bank-hack...
Authy can be used just as a SMS-based 2fa, and this is as insecure as Google SMS. Note that this is still more secure than you (or me) implementing you own code via sms, because they do intelligence on the phone numbers, especially on critical operations like changing phone/merging accounts.
Then there's Authy app with the TOTP code, similar to Google Authenticator. From a security perspective it is true that having Authy on multiple devices slightly decreases your security, as an attacker could steal any device and bypass your 2fa.
I'm not convinced when people say that they can turn off Authy with just a phone verification (i.e. stealing the phone number), vs you can't on Google Authenticator. The fact that you have Google Authenticator, maybe even as a default, doesn't mean you don't have SMS too as an option, so the same attack can happen on Google.
Also, note that for many critical operations, in Authy and Google, you receive a notification. In particular, if you have many devices connected, you'll receive multiple notifications with an higher probability of catching the issue on time.
It would be nice to see explicit examples of the attacks mentioned. If you have someone's password and phone number [], you have a lot, and you can probably fool Google, Facebook, or any big as you can fool Authy.
let's also remember that 2fa is the 2nd factor. Your first factor, the password, should be strong as well.
Facebook calls these "code generator applications" and maybe that term will catch on.
Even if you forget about sms, sms is still available to get a code and bypass 2fa.
Authy itself, if you have the app, never sends you sms but push notification.
I'm not sure duo is relevant in this discussion, no consumer app that i know/i'm aware of uses duo.
Used that way --- the default way --- you can't bypass it with SMS.
Responses were like GA is better because there's no SMS. This is true if you look at GA vs Authy mobile apps.
This is false, if you look at the consumer services where you enabled 2fa (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Coinbase, Twitch...). They all require SMS to setup 2fa, and let you use SMS to bypass GA.
You can not bypass GA with an SMS (the TOTP), you can bypass the service 2fa, because for availability reasons they must provide you more than a single 2fa method.
https://blog.lastpass.com/2017/05/announcing-cloud-backup-fo...
I would still say it's not recommend to backup those keys in the cloud, and I hope LastPass at least has the common sense not to keep those keys on the same server as the LastPass passwords. However, a middle ground may be backing up the keys before you change/reset your phone, and then disabling the feature (I'm not sure if they actually wipe or reset those keys every time you disable the backup feature, though, but I hope they do that).
https://www.authy.com/phones/change/
It says they may perform "additional security checks" in the help but what are they? The wooliness of this makes me very nervous. (I don't use Authy fwiw)