The worse part is that people think they're more protected, when they're really not.
(I have written a TOTP implementation myself. I do not have a GH account, and likely never will.)
It's very easy to permanently lose accounts when 2FA is in use. If I lose my device my account is gone for good.
Tokens from github never expire, and can do everything via API without ever touching 2FA, so it's not that secure.
Incorrect, unless you choose not to record your seeds anywhere else, which is not a 2fa problem.
2fa is in the end nothing more than a 2nd password that just isn't sent over the wire when used.
You can store a totp seed exactly the same as a password, in any form you want, anywhere you want, and use on a brand new device at any time.
You know google authenticator app introduced a backup feature less than 1 year ago right?
You know phones break all the time right?
Because if you don't use weak passwords MFA doesn't add value. I do recommend MFA for most people because for most people their password is the name of their dog (which I can look up on social media) followed by "1!" to satisfy the silly number and special character rules. So yes please use MFA.
But if your (like my) passwords are 128+bits out of /dev/random, MFA isn't adding value.
With MFA even if somebody has your password if they don't have your physical authenticator too then you're relatively safe.
I don't have strong opinions about making it mandatory, but I turned on 2FA for all accounts of importance years ago. I use a password manager, which means everything I "know" could conceivably get popped with one exploit.
It's not that much friction to pull out (or find) my phone and authenticate. It only gets annoying when I switch phones, but I have a habit of only doing that every four years or so.
You sound like you know what you're doing, that's fine, but I don't think it's true that MFA doesn't add security on average.
Right. I don't ever want to tie login to a phone because phones are pretty disposable.
> I don't think it's true that MFA doesn't add security on average
You're right! On average it's better, because most people have bad password and/or reuse them in more than one place. So yes MFA is better.
But if your password is already impossible to guess (as 128+ random bits are) then tacking on a few more bytes of entropy (the TOTP seed) doesn't do much.
It's hard to get a software keylooger installed on a corp. machine. It's easy to get physical access to the office or even their homes and install keyloggers all over the place and download the data via BT.
You are of course correct.
This is where threat modeling comes in. To really say if something is more secure or less secure or a wash, threat modeling needs to be done, carefully considering which threats you want to cover and not cover.
I this thread I'm talking from the perspective of an average individual with a personal machine and who is not interesting enough to be targeted by corporate espionage or worse.
Thus, the threat of operatives breaking into my house and installing hardware keyloggers on my machines is not part of my threat model. I don't care about that at all, for my personal use.
For sensitive company machines or known CxOs and such, yes, but that's a whole different discussion and threat model exercise.
no. a second factor of authentication is completely orthogonal to password complexity.
