If you’ve taken the wise step to establish two-factor authentication on your email, social media, and other online accounts, we have good news: Two-factor authentication, or 2FA for short, will help you ward off 99.9 percent of automated attacks. That means automated hacking systems that guess passwords or steal them online are extremely unlikely to crack your accounts which are double-protected.
Now for the not-so-good news: Hackers are becoming increasingly clever and have found some ways to bypass 2FA and get into your accounts anyway. It’s a bit of a burdensome workaround, but hackers with enough time on their hands might try it on accounts that are particularly tempting.
Due to lax security at cell phone companies, hackers might be able to convince your provider that “you” have been victimized by an attack, theft, or simple loss of your phone. They then convince the provider to switch your cell service to another device (theirs). Now, when those 2FA texts or voicemails go out, they go straight to the hacker’s phone.
Or, if the hacker is able to access your app store account, they might then install an app which synchronizes messages across several devices. Now when attempting to access an account with 2FA, the verification text or voicemail goes to both your phone and theirs.
Luckily, these types of violations are still quite new and not very common, and because they require extra effort on the part of the hacker, you can take additional steps to safeguard all of your passwords and online accounts. Multi-factor authentication is recommended whenever possible at this time.
Let’s review your authentication procedures along with the rest of your internet security protocol, and we can make further recommendations based on your exact needs. Call us at 888-RING-MY-TECH, and we can answer all of your security questions.
