I Hacked My Friend's Phone to Show How Easy It Is [video]
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That credit union is awful for many other reasons, so I don't keep much in that account, but I wonder why banking in the US is so bad at security. I don't think I have a single bank or credit card online account that allows for TOTP. It's all SMS or phone call, with one bank allowing for app push notifications.
Is there a compliance check box that requires SMS over something with at least some security?
Yes - it ticks the box for 2FA.
You could always send the portion of the guidelines to as many credit union people as possible. Someone may bite.
Also, worse: does this mean that by just having one bad 2FA/recovery method like SMS along with more secure ones like TOTP/RFC 6238 or hardware keys, the overall security level is as low/bad as the worst method undermining the rest? Why do companies still allow or even encourage multiple methods (and SMS)?
I love the convenience of SMS sometimes, but if it doesn't add any security at all, just a sense of fake security that they won't even need an IMEI from me, just my phone number, jeez. This should be solved or forbidden by major institutions and services.
First, intercepting SMS is not that easy. It's "easy" for someone who knows what they are doing and is willing to expend some resources, but it's not a casual attack that can be mounted by a script kiddie. It's a lot easier to steal your phone number using a social engineering attack. The easiest one to execute is to impersonate you somehow and get your number transferred to a "new" phone. That one got me a few years ago. Very scary.
Second, in order to exploit an SMS attack you have to be able to link the number to e.g. a bank account. One mitigation for this is to use different and non-obvious user IDs for critical accounts.
Third, despite its weaknesses, SMS 2FA is better than no 2FA at all. Even if breaking SMS is "easy" it's still an additional cost for a prospective hacker. You don't have to outrun the bear.
But it is good to be aware that SMS 2FA is weak. It's better than nothing, but for things that are really mission-critical you should seek alternatives.
That said, the real world example Veratasium used was chilling.
Having LinusTechTips as a 2nd example (whos showing off his new apple phone) was a nice counter too. I'm pretty sure LTT uses multi factor+user auth though so I'm guessing that sms 2fa email was an alt email for personal use.
Gonna have to watch that 2014 presentation on ss7 it seems.
I think that lack of information, i.e. any effort to remediate this, is an information in itself.
eBay is the first one that comes to mind. I know I've run into it a couple of other times where a website will just offer to text you a code, but usually there is a small link you can click that says "use my password instead".
Facebook and Amazon don't have my cell phone number, but I bet they have an option.
I don't usually try to reset my passwords since I use a password manager, so it's probably more common than that.
To quote a report from GSA;
>192 operators in 68 countries and territories have completed, planned, or are in the process of switching off their 2G and 3G networks.
So it is not as bad as most people thinks. My only wish is that we could do the 5.5G transition a lot faster and switch off 2G / 3G ASAP.
I can confirm that the title "I Hacked My Friend's Phone to Show How Easy It Is" was the actual title when the video was uploaded. However you're right that it now looks like it changed to "Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System" a day later.
Watch an older Veratasium video about Youtube's title+thumbnail clickbait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
+1 for explaination above.