Hacker News Reader

Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Three-factor authentication? What's the third factor? Something you know, something you own, and... maybe something you are (biometrics)?

View on HN

It's a mistake/misunderstanding in the article. They're using two factor authentication: https://old.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/cciyx6/712_res...

Something you know, something you're pretty sure you wrote down somewhere around here, something you aspire to be.

Fourth factor, something you believe in

It seems like three-factor is a mistake in the article, but what you suggest is very close to the three factors that will be involved in SCA (Strong Customer Authentication), an upcoming European regulatory requirement to reduce fraud in payments:

https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication#wha...

(Although only two of the three will be required.)

Something you know, something you have, something you love

Typically two factor authentication just means this account and one other account. Incidentally sometimes is a gadget or a phone number.

Adding two secondary accounts (both an SMS and an email) could warrant the name

Why can't it be: Something you know, something you have, something else you have?

Because if I can steal one widget from you, stealing two probably isn't significantly more difficult unless you actually care about physical security and keep those two objects far apart from each other.

Now, it's likely that you do the right thing given the chance, but I know for a fact that my dad keeps the keys to his safe in his filing cabinet, and the keys to his filing cabinet in another filing cabinet. It's not really an extra layer of security.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com