Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System
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Can you trust your phone? Head to https://brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial and get 20% off an annual premium subscription.A huge than...

00:00​ I hacked Linus!
00:59​ How Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak hacked the telephone network
02:22​ Early history of the telephone
07:08​ The kidnapping of Sheikha Latifa
08:41​ How Signalling System No. 7 works
11:03​ Why SS7 is vulnerable to hacking
12:15​ How hackers gain access to phones
16:17​ How I was able to spy on Linus’ phone
18:09​ How hackers can intercept text messages
21:04​ How your location can be tracked via SS7
29:03​ How to protect your phone from hacking

  • mipadaitu@lemmy.worldEnglish
    224·
    3 months ago

    SMS is fine for 2FA, as long as you can’t use it for anything else, like a password reset.

    Once the SMS is used for account recovery, it’s now 1FA with a terrible security hole.

    If you have complex, single use passwords, and have SMS 2FA, then it’s pretty ok. Not the best security, but at least better than a most.

    Obviously offline time based passkeys are better for the 2FA, but typically the real problem is how to get into an account if you’ve lost one part of your login.

    • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      28·
      3 months ago

      SMS is fine for 2FA, as long as you can’t use it for anything else

      Oh yeah? Post your bank customer number and your telephone number on here and see how fast your account gets drained without you even getting a single confirmation code SMS.

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        3 months ago

        How would they get past the other factor, the password?

        If you’re gonna say “SMS can be used to reset the password” then it starts to sound like you’re complaining about insecure password reset processes, not 2FA.

        • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
          21·
          3 months ago

          Some people really don’t understand layered security.

          Too many of them are programmers.

          • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            5·
            3 months ago

            Yes, but that argument can be made against TOTP too.

            SMS 2FA is less secure than TOTP, but still better than no second factor, since most criminals with access to a password database aren’t able to take over your phone number (on a large scale).

            With most services allowing some kind of password reset over SMS, I also prefer no 2FA over SMS 2FA. I already lost an account because I changed my number.