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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused. Is this a Windows-exclusive thing? As an iPhone and Mac user is there anything I need to do?

There is an app in the iPhone App Store called "Microsoft Authenticator" - is that what this story is about or is there a Windows feature with a confusingly identical name?

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Yes, they're talking about a mobile app used for two-factor authentication. It doesn't run on Windows (or Mac). If you don't have this app on your phone, you don't need to worry about it.

IME some MS shops enforce use of it for 2fa to access company resources like vpn and etc. - for eg, the only reason this app exists on my phone is so I can log into my employer's vpn.

Are you sure you need the Microsoft one? After reading the giant support document at my employer I eventually figured out that any TOTP supporting app would work but most of the documentation made it sound like Microsoft was required anyway.

it seems to be a push notification where the ms authenticator doesn't generate a code until I first log into the vpn using exchange creds but tbf, I didn't look hard enough for alternatives so you are probably right that I could use any totp app.

This depends on how the organization configures things. My company used to allow TOTP so many TOTP apps could be used instead of Microsoft Authenticator but my company disabled that a while ago. Now the only authenticator app my company allows is Microsoft Authenticator using push notifications (see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/authenticat... ). Consider yourself lucky if your employer allows you to use any TOTP app you want instead of forcing you to use Microsoft Authenticator.

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