this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
93 points (100.0% liked)
196
5306 readers
922 users here now
Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Moderator Guidelines
- Don’t be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
- Most moderator actions which have a modlog message should include your username.
- When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM.
- Don’t waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
- Assume the best, but don’t tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
- Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, if you get tired, or when things get personal.
- Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
- Share everything you do in the mod matrix, both so several mods aren't unknowingly handling the same issues, but also so you can receive feedback on what you intend to do.
- Don't rush mod actions. If a case doesn't need to be handled right away, consider taking a short break before getting to it. This is to say, cool down and make room for feedback.
- Don’t perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
- Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don’t want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven’t been banned of course.
- Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
- First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
- Use neutral statements like “this statement can be considered transphobic” rather than “you are being transphobic”.
- No large decisions or actions without community input (polls or meta posts f.ex.).
- Large internal decisions (such as ousting a mod) might require a vote, needing more than 50% of the votes to pass. Also consider asking the community for feedback.
- Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don’t get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
That, uh, defeats the purpose of 2FA? Like completely lol
2fa is something you have and something you know.
Password is something you know, this paper is something you have.
Something you know, this paper will quickly become something everyone knows the minute the weakest link in your company security pipeline gets a hold of one.
the paper is not something you know, it is not possible to memorize it.
Good thing we all have phones with cameras, and there are 2 hours worth of codes printed here.
So now it is something that everyone has, it is still not something "you know". Still counts as a second factor.
If you're leaving your otp unlocked on your desk, you're doing it wrong.
Thats why they are time sensitive.
Yeah and the first thing a pentester is doing is snapping a shot of that as they walk by. Its not taking long. Theres at least an hour that we can see in this screenshot. That is enough time.
No.
Password I remember is the 1st factor, a valid code from this list (which depends on time) is the second factor.
It's same as using the phone, except that here they were precomputed and on paper for some time span. None of these are valid now (well, maybe there is one, it's a bunch of number combinations after all), and you don't have the private key to generate more.
Say, you can tell that at 10:02:30 UTC the valid code was 262887, but you don't know what it is now.
That's the advantage of TOTP, they expire. If it were plain HOTP, I'd only need 1 code at a time anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_one-time_password
It does. If you were to lose this paper while it were active any hacker could access your account. At least your phone has a PIN or pattern they also have to guess. This is just waiting there to be social engineered away from you (if it were still active, which good thing its not)
But they'd also need the password.
Alternative would be disabling 2FA altogether.
I believe most passwords are brute forced or phished nowadays, so unless you have some password manager changing your passwords every hour or so the password is probably pretty moot if the employee has to set it.
Brute-forcing would take some bit of time. If the 6 digit code, 3 combinations of which are likely valid at a time becomes your only factor, you've already lost. Long randomly generated combinations are unrealistic to brute-force. For now at least.
And here's a screenshot from when I brute-forced the 2FA to my Lemmy account because I trusted the wrong app (Cisco Duo and its backups without version control wiping everything after turning on older device):
6 digits isn't much.
Also I hate how it's implemented everywhere. We figured out that telling someone whether the password or username is incorrect is a bad thing, so now we do "username or password incorrect". But what about 2FA? Username is easy to get if targeting a specific person.
If you can get to 2FA, you know the password was correct. That's the case basically everywhere. Then it's just 6 digits to guess. And typically you also only get notified about logins when successful. Too late at that point.
My wish would be to take both password and 2FA code at once, and just return "password or 2FA invalid" if one or both of them are wrong.
Any sane implementation should rate limit you to 3 tries/min
I wish hardware tokens or something were more prevalent or anything that doesn't require me to visit 2 separate pages (login then 2fa) to login everytime. All the services I use at work timeout at ~15 minutes and it can be a slog. Software authenticators are convenient to keep track of but theres got to be a better way.
aaaaalmost completely. Knowing a second piece of information technically counts, it's just like ... about as secure as using someone's SSN for the 2fa, which is absolutely stupid.
I'll give you one better. For a certain thing, the university I attend decided to use birth numbers as a password. And that was the only factor.
Mind you, in Slovakia, the birth number consists of birth date + random 4 digits.
Much safety.
Anyway, SSN doesn't expire in less than 4 hours.
That's why it's 'about' as stupid. Many US services only really need basic PII to at least set up an account, which is scarily low levels of security.
You know employees are taping this to their cubicle lol all it would take is some white hat grabbing it off your desk before you all have to do special training from IT
This is different from an employee leaving their 2FA device at their desk how?
Most 2FA is software on someone's phone, like Microsoft Authenticator. Its not different from leaving a device. It is very different from leaving your phone.
I don't follow what you're trying to say here. (The last 2 sentences contradict in my mind)
Anyway, phone vs this tomfoolery, it might not be more/less secure, just different.
What's on paper is all there will be, as it doesn't include the secret for generating additional codes.
Phone has that, but also has a screen lock. Whether that is easy to bypass will depend on environment, but after the first unlock, it is at least realistic.
Plus you have people like my father who go by "no lock, nothing to hide".
For immediate exploit, paper looses.
For later persistent exploitation, phone looses.
Also, no one's going to have endless scrolls of codes like this. 2 pages for less than 4 hours. Round that up to 2 hours per page, that would be 12 pages per day, 360 pages per month, 4,380 pages per year.
I had to do this, because it was a requirement (they even recommended to print out the password). Actually, they didn't mention 2FA, just to print out the password (and no use of personal devices). This is the best I could do given the environment.
There are purposed 2FA devices that aren't your phone. Leaving one of those laying around is about the same security level as leaving these papers is what that says. Either way that sounds like ass to deal with regardless of how secure it is. Give me Aegis or give me death.
Oh, how could I forget that. My bank uses them. But it also needs my (physical) debit card and its PIN.
Bit cumbersome to use.
It feels like fifteen tons to login anywhere in the modern day.
No? Two separate pieces of information aren't two factors.
But this would be the factor "ownership" and "knowledge". Anyone attempting to hack into OP's account needs both the paper (or a copy thereof) AND the password. Just like withdrawing money from ab ATM requires the card and a PIN.
Though the fact you can easily copy the paper makes it a pretty weak "ownership" factor. Just like how using eye color would be a pretty weak "identity" factor.