Hacker News Reader

Comment by xfax | Hacker News Reader

Two-factor auth gets old really fast when you have to use public computers in a setting like a college library. I had turned it on for a while, but turned it off when I had 5 minutes to print out a paper that I had emailed myself (yes, I still do that) and was fiddling with my phone to get the damn PIN. Never again.

View on HN

Maybe it's just me but I only trust computers I control.

If you don't have root on a box, consider it pwn3d with keyloggers listening to every juicy password you type. Take that as your friend's laptop, a library computer or even your parent's Windows XP box...

Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.

/tinfoilhat

Yeah, that would be great if the damn wireless printing worked in school. Sometimes you just have to log into a public machine.

You couldn't use a USB key instead?

Sure I could. Not denying that there are other ways to get access to the files I need, just that this has become a part of my workflow that two-factor auth disrupts.

I think having a second gmail address just for emailin yourself files for public computers might work for you. Keep your personal email safe, and forward what you need to the other address. It's a good compromise.

Don't underestimate how vulnerable you are when your email gets hacked - virtually every service you use can be accessed by the forgotten password mechanism when your email is breached. I'm pretty lazy and have procrastinated for a long time, but with the recent attacks and realizing what a mess I could face if hacked I finally implemented two factor auth and I have no regrets yet.

The problem of having to type in your password on an unsecured machine still exists.

To access files in this situation, a better approach would have been to upload the file to a webserver. You can then safely download it from the library computer without anything being compromised.

You'd only have to type in the password for an email you don't care about from the unsecured computer, as long as you knew ahead of time to forward the things you needed to print from the library computer. The web server method seems a little less secure since rather than having your files behind a non-two factor email account, they're publicly available. How is that better?

You trust computers you control? That's so cute.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

True, but you can only go so far down the rabbit hole until you think you've done enough due diligence to remove as much risk as you feel comfortable with.

How much "fiddling" do you have to do to get your PIN? Unlock code or symbol, select authenticator app, read PIN? On top of loading Gmail and entering your user/pass?

The authenticator app might be the game changer for me - in the depths of mordor (aka library), I hardly ever get a cell signal.

To me, the use case you describe would make me very happy to be using two factor auth - logging into a very important personal account using untrusted, public computers I don't control. I'd be glad for the extra hassle with that.

Well, is that 5-minutes-to-print an edge case or a more than occasional situation? If the latter, how hard is it to create an alternate email account in which you send non-confidential emails/docs on the spur of a moment?

If it's an edge case, it seems like a trivial one for reducing your security so much. As your documented online data grows, the chance of being hacked only grows. And once you've been hacked, there's really no going back if the attacker decides to do a data-dump and now forever holds your information in perpetuity.

Yeah, yeah, I should probably turn it on. And while I'm at it, I should probably eat more vegetables, less red meat and go to the gym. But I don't see those happening either ;).

Seriously though, when you have to enter the PIN multiple times a day, it gets annoying.

If you're entering it multiple times a day due to using public machines then you really, really should be using two-factor auth as many systems you use may be compromised in one way or another.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com