Can’t access your phone to verify Microsoft Authenticator? Please use Microsoft Authenticator to reset your account, thanks bye.
No matter how bad you have it someone else has it worse.
In order to do my job I have to log into the VPN, and then remote desktop onto a server, then from that server remote desktop onto another server. Then I have to go back to the first remote desktop and remote desktop onto a different server which from there I can remote desktop onto two other servers, on one of those servers there are two different log ons which I can use to do different tasks.
Then back on the main desktop I can remotely connect via web browser to a virtual machine that I can then remote desktop onto a server. If I want to change the password on that server I have to remote desktop from that remote desktop from that virtual machine, into a remote desktop.
Oh and then there is the web app that I have to use that only works in Internet Explorer, but for security reasons IE has been removed from the main system, so I have an entire remote desktop literally just to use Internet Explorer.
It takes about 25 minutes to log into everything everyday and about 10 minutes to log out at the end of the day.
Oh ffs I got annoyed just reading the comment I can’t imagine the hell of having to do that
You clearly don’t work in an OT environment. Network segmentation is everything.
I bet the security “experts” who designed this are busy jerking each other off about how “secure” they’ve made everything
Thanks for the aneurysm. I feel for you.
Fuck, and here I thought AGS progressive controllers were bad. Remote desktop into the controller using a commonly known username and password to get a “salt”, “hash code”, “iterations”, “password length”, and “server name”. Enter all that onto a website that has to be logged in to, all to get a generated password which is used to remote desktop desktop into the same progressive controller under a different account. Password changes every 24 hours. Oh, and did I mention that this is typically done on an active casino floor? Good times.
But why though
Okay so I get this is a meme BUT I started using a yubikey instead of the auth app and it has done a world of good for my sanity.
I transitioned everything to Bitwarden. Password manager, passkeys, and MFA code generation all in one app that works on all of my devices.
And then I started to self-host it via Vaultwarden and transferred all the data.
Bitwarden is just so awesome
How do you like the self hosted approach? I contemplate it every so often, but I’m not sure that my sysadmin abilities (and attention) are enough to keep it secure.
Depends on your org. I have a yubikey, a phone app Authenticator, a pin and my regular SSO login/password. All of which I have to use constantly, because some dumbass did something dumb like two fucking years ago. So I can hardly get shit done. Plus the same dumbasses who probably fucked all this up are writing production code for an actual product. Please kill me.
I hear that if you lock down your system so much that no one can access anything that’s peak security.
I too have a yubikey. My advice, have something that functions as a backup.
Other than that, yes. It’s way better than alternatives.
Yeah, I got 4 because I’m paranoid about losing access to things, and still spread out backup TFA mechanisms… I don’t trust technology to be reliable enough, heh.
Personally, I have the second Gen Google Titan USB keys, I upgraded from the first Gen some time ago. They’re Fido2 so they’re very equivalent to yubikey in most respects.
I use my yubikey for work. I connect it to anything and everything I can. I use Microsoft’s authenticator as my backup for work.
I have a pair of Fido2 keys for personal with totp backups, and recovery codes as a last line of defense (stored in a secure location), and one Fido2 key with totp backups for work.
Ironically, the least secure account I have is for my bank, which doesn’t support Fido2 (or anything other than SMS).
Are you using the slightly more expensive one capable of generating TOTP codes?
I also use a Yubikey too, but I still have to use another 2FA app for services that don’t support passkeys yet.
We use duo as 2fA for our Microsoft accounts at work. Every Thursday its log into teams on phone log into teams on desktop, log into outlook on phone, log into outlook on desktop. Why can’t your apps cross authenticate on the same device? How does one drive manage to stay authenticated throughout the whole process?
Any actual work I need togets done is done on a 15 year old think pad running Debian. The beefy 12th gen i9 just whirrs its fan around and occasionally gets used for emails, team chats and logging up tickets.
There’s actually a duo feature that does that.
Normally apps can’t cross authenticate like that because they don’t have the ability to talk to each other in a standard way that’s also verifiable and secure. Teams could have a way to share your auth to something else, but it’s much more difficult for it to know that the thing asking for access actually is something that’s supposed to be able to do so.
OneDrive is built in to Windows, so it’s able to use the authentication you use to log into the computer to talk to the Microsoft servers. (Essentially, there’s like a million steps and layers of indirection).
And get 15 emails from microsoft regarding how you just logged in.
Our password manager requires logging in and using the authenticator every time the session times out, so we all started using a browser plug-in to keep the session alive all day.
So secure.
Complain to the guys that set stupid policies that encourage people to do this. We gave up trying and don’t care any more.
That may have come off as judgmental. It wasn’t meant to be. When you make security so onerous that no one will do it then it’s little surprise that people… won’t.
Especially when it’s a business.
Seconding the ask on the extension, I hate having to log into my secret store every 15 minutes while working on stuff
Session alive
Same issue. What’s the extension called?
I use session alive
Oh did you change your phone? Suffer bitch!!!
/s
As someone on the other side, in IT support, you can fix this yourself and I wish more people would.
Before your old phone gets wiped and sent to the graveyard, log in using authenticator, and go to “view account” from any of the online pages for Microsoft (if you’re unsure, try login.microsoft.com ). Go to your security options, and you should see all the info you need to remove the old authenticator and add a new one.
From here you can also add backups, which I encourage everyone to do.
It saves you from having to call IT all the time to fix it, and since you don’t have to go through the usual back and forth of verifying who you are, or whatever, and getting them to do a thing, you can take care of it for yourself, by yourself, without those unnecessary delays.
Your IT people will appreciate it, and you’ll have to talk to them a bit less as a result.
I did this and checked my devices on the login or account page (not sure exactly which one it was). It showed two devices, that were named “iPhone”. No idea, which one is the new one and which one is the old one. IT-support couldn’t tell either. So once I’ll have to hand in my old iPhone and delete it from the trusted devices / devices with authenticator, it will be a hit or miss game.
That’s the pinch. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. I’m sure there’s a way, but it’s not something I would want to do.
My thought would be to delete everything and start over when you get a new phone.
You should try Okta instead! It’s… blue.
Da ba dee da ba da
Have the day you/your company paid to have.
Get a yubi key then you have to find your keys
I have a Yubi key that crashes Authenticator when I select the option to it l use it. It goes into a loop asking to touch the button and type the PIN. But it does not wait for input, it just keeps creating windows until it crashes.
What a ball ache inclined to blame ms for that because statically it probably is down to them 🤣I’ve had an issue where it doesn’t ask for the pin so it fails but I just close the browser and it’s fine.
I have multiple accounts configured on the same yubikey, but it seems like any of the Microsoft login portals expect you to always use the account you most recently signed in with. So any time I need to switch accounts (which is often, I have different accounts for each different testing environment and access level), I have to type in my pin and touch my key twice - once to allow Microsoft to try logging in with the wrong account and fail, and then another time where it asks which account I want to use. 🙃
I have a 3d printed access card holder that also holds my work yubikey. Very handy
The largest issue I have is the randomness of all the different security setups. One requires MFA by e-mail, one requires an authenticator, most require sms, some push to require using their app, and this random page requires a code by phone call. Now they are pushing passkeys and that is a complete cluster.
What’s ironic is that most of the webpages that push these things don’t reach the “Do I give a fuck?” threshold. The security is usually there to protect against unauthorized use of user stored credit cards. Since I am not liable for any fraudulent charges to the credit card, I really don’t give a fuck about securing the account. Yeah I am reusing passwords, keeping them in plain text in a word doc etc…
When I worked for other companies, I moderately gave fuck about there security. Not enough to inconvenience me. If they made me change the password constantly, they got the number changing series at the end of the password - $tupidPass#01 Seriously that was my actual work password for over a decade.
Now my bank account and financial logins. You’d better believe those have every security feature they offer setup. I do not fuck around with those. I give a fuck about those.
I remember reading an article once which referred to research which suggested that making people change passwords every month made their accounts less secure, because they have to go extra steps to remember them - which usually translates to making them really obvious and/or storing them where they’re easily accessed. In one of my previous jobs where we had to change passwords every month, basically everybody would have their password written on a post-it on their computer monitor.
In my first job I had like 7 different passwords to access different systems. Each one had different schedule of password reset. They each ended up being on a different reset schedule. I had to reset a password once or twice a week.
Yeah, everyone had their passwords on a sticky note on their monitor. I once got praise for being the one person without it. I of course had an abreviation for the system with what number series the password was on posted on my monitor.
This is my current job. I’ve got monthly, every three months, every quarter, once per year… Thank goodness the last service they added has SSO.
I had a passkey card where each letter was given a random sequence of uppercase, lowercase, a number and a symbol. With just a four letter word as they key you had a 16 digit random password that was hard to guess even if you had the key sheet.
Yeah, that’s actually also why it’s no longer considered best practice to force regular password changes. But many places / websites /apps still do, obviously.
or storing them where they’re easily accessed
Sticky note under the keyboard is probably still the number one spot.
I worked in top secret military stuff and the worst I had was every 4 months on some systems. Monthly seems extremely ineffective.
One day Ms will make the power point you’re sharing on teams even smaller than today…but I’m here to tell you how to do it now. Take a look at the slide below!
.Lemmy is now better than teams! Yey!
On a scale of 1-10 how likely are you having conversations with your friends about <ms Authenticator>
Hmmm. Conversation, yes.
I hate MS Auth so badly. Why don’t they just implement the “normal” 2FA instead? MS doesn’t work with Ente Auth
You might be able to use a “normal” (TOTP-compliant / Google Authenticator-like) 2FA app even with Microsoft work accounts. One of the prompts to download MS Authenticator has a “use a different app” option:
I assume admins can disable it, but it’s also easy to miss. On top of this, this prompt only shows up when attempting to add a new MS Authenticator, since there is no “other app” option among the authenticator type choices.
Nah I guess our admins have disabled it. fuck…
microsoft has sucked arse for eons. the real q is why the fuck IT keeps buying their shit.
Their sales department gets all the budget.
In my country, Microsoft has inserted itself into the education system. If you want to learn system / network admin so you can run IT at pretty much any local business, it’s all Microsoft.
To be fair, Active Directory does make it easier to manage a bunch of windows boxes with consistent users and permissions. When your users are business people mashing Excel spreadsheets all day, and build their lives and identities around Excel, you pretty much have to give them the environment that Excel runs in, which is Microsoft.
Idk, they probably want someone to blame
Idk my microsoft account works fine with ente auth.
There’s a government-tier system used by lots of schools, cities, etc. It fucking SUCKS.
Like: if you have Outlook on your mobile device and add a government system account, it makes you remove any other accounts. Even if those other accounts are part of the same organization.
And since I manage more than 1 email account that need to go to separate inboxes for legal reasons, I get to carry 3 phones and a tablet.
Wowie what a horrible system
Did I mention the part where I work for a municipal government by day and teach at a public university by night? It’s 2 phones and a tablet for the city, one for the university, and a 4th phone I didn’t mention for me.
Though the school phone usually gets left in my bag. I teach scuba and underwater photography. Nobody’s gonna lose their house over me waiting a few days to respond to an email. The only time my duties there are critical is when I’m actively with the students. Then it’s more important because pressurized encironkents and breathing and stuff.
But I also don’t take my phone underwater ^(on purpose).
Normal Microsoft Account does support “normal 2FA”. However, my school MS Account only supports microsoft’s own protocol, which is not supported by other authenticators (Aegis, Ente, Raivo, etc).
However, my school MS Account only supports microsoft’s own protocol, which is not supported by other authenticators (Aegis, Ente, Raivo, etc).
Ah that sucks. My UNI supports it so I just have everything inside ente.
Bruh. One more reason to hate my country
Why the whole country? Just hate the school
You’re right. I’m just fed up with this place, you know…
What country is “this place” if I may ask?
I like when you want to make a Microsoft account, it asks you to enter your exisiting e-mail first (you can enter one ending with
@outlook.comor@hotmail.comthough, it will create new mail account). It’s like they don’t believe in their own products, lol.I once created a Microsoft account (for a Windows 7 machine I think) and entered a Google address. It didn’t seem to mind. It’s my Microsoft account to this day, not that I have much use for it. Maybe it’s gotten more weird nowadays.
That’s the point. For a long time I assumed that they give you an e-mail address (currently Outlook) by default, like Google does with GMail, but they don’t.
Oh, right Separate departments I suppose
What?
An @outlook.com / @hotmail.com account is already a Microsoft account to begin with. If you enter one of those that already exists, you’re just signing in. There is no “new mail account”.
It makes sense to have the user use their own existing email address so that they have it as recovery option, most people don’t need another email address.
I am not sure that you read my comment properly. Registration form asks for non-Microsoft e-mail address first. You CAN enter Outlook or Hotmail address, which will create one, but it’s not even something that they acknowledge in that form.
And if you still don’t believe me yet, I have literally tried this yesterday, and it works. It did create a new Outlook account when Ientered
...@outlook.come-mail address.My father has a Microsoft account, but doesn’t have Outlook/Hotmail account for example, which is a bit strange at least for me, and I had no idea that this is the default.
I think the misunderstanding comes from where you wrote “it would create a new mail account” which is objectively inaccurate, the @outlook.com / @hotmail.com emails already exist as both a “mail” and Microsoft account - there’s literally nothing being “created” in that situation, you’re just signing in to what already exists.
In your father’s case, he probably has a Microsoft Account set up with a third party email address. If he were to want that to include a mailbox, he could navigate to his Microsoft account’s email settings, create a new “@outlook.com” alias, and set it as the primary alias for the account. He would then have a mailbox usable at Outlook.com or via Microsoft Exchange in a mail client.
It’s possible to do the same thing with Google - you can create your Google account using a third-party email address, you won’t have a mailbox but if you were to visit gmail.com you would be offered the option to create a mailbox with a new @gmail.com address.
