GitHub to require 2FA on accounts by October 6, 2023

Xylight (Photon dev)@lemmy.xylight.dev to Technology@lemmy.ml – 395 points –
Raising the bar for software security: GitHub 2FA begins March 13
github.blog

I personally am fine with this.

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Like why on earth do I need two different authenticator apps on my phone (authy&google authenticator)?

you... don't?

Both of these implement exactly the same protocol (TOTP). Used authy for all my Top Of The Pops Time-based one-time password needs exclusively, before moving everything to bitwarden

Unfortunately there are some websites that require Authy (probably because Authy wined and dined some business executive). I absolutely loathe these sites but if it’s a site you’re not willing to live without, you’re stuck with having Authy plus your main 2FA app.

which ones are that? I'd love to check, because afaik, they have a feature that enables push-2fa via authy, but should generally work on other apps as well

Sendgrid's only options for 2FA are Authy (their proprietary token generation, no option for TOTP) or SMS. Tried signing up the other day and was surprised to find no option to use standard TOTP.

https://docs.sendgrid.com/ui/account-and-settings/two-factor-authentication

Are you sure that you can't use a different TOTP generator? There's a difference between telling you to use Authy and still being able to use a different app

Yes I'm sure, hence why I specifically mentioned that. Try the sign up procedure yourself. It REQUIRES 2fa and it has to be Authy's non-standard token or SMS. No option for regular TOTP.

thx. just making sure. I already saw a lot of people annoyed about a specific app, just because that was the one being advertised, but in the end it was TOTP

websites explicitly said to get one or the other so I did.

Well the good news for you is that a website specifying one or the other is nothing more than marketing from that app maker! So long as there is a QR code (or a long random-ish string), you can use any authenticator app that supports that website’s 2FA algorithms!

That last bit is important because I think Lemmy had a non-standard 2FA algorithm (SHA-256?) that wouldn’t work with Google Authenticator.

Lemmy works with Google Authenticator, but not with Authy.

Annoyingly Authy fails silently and ignores the part of the code that specifies SHA-256 and just generates a SHA-1 code that won't work with no warning or indication to the user.

that's good to know. I'll just switch everything over to google authenticator then.