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Phone Numbers Were Never Meant as ID. Now We're All At Risk (wired.com)
One key lesson from the recent T-Mobile and several other breaches: our phone numbers, that serve as a means to identity and verify ourselves, are increasingly getting targeted, and the companies are neither showing an appetite to work on an alternative identity management system, nor are they introducing more safeguards to how phone numbers are handled and exchanged. From a report: Identity management experts have warned for years about over-reliance on phone numbers. But the United States doesn't offer any type of universal ID, which means private institutions and even the federal government itself have had to improvise. As cell phones proliferated, and phone numbers became more reliably attached to individuals long term, it was an obvious choice to start collecting those numbers even more consistently as a type of ID. But over time, SMS messages, biometric scanners, encrypted apps, and other special functions of smartphones have evolved into forms of authentication as well.
"The bottom line is society needs identifiers," says Jeremy Grant, coordinator of the Better Identity Coalition, an industry collaboration that includes Visa, Bank of America, Aetna, and Symantec. "We just have to make sure that knowledge of an identifier can't be used to somehow take over the authenticator. And a phone number is only an identifier; in most cases, it's public." Think of your usernames and passwords. The former are generally public knowledge; it's how people know who you are. But you keep the latter guarded, because it's how you prove who you are.
The use of phone numbers as both lock and key has led to the rise, in recent years, of so-called SIM swapping attacks, in which an attacker steals your phone number. When you add two-factor authentication to an account and receive your codes through SMS texts, they go to the attacker instead, along with any calls and texts intended for the victim. Sometimes attackers even use inside sources at carriers who will transfer numbers for them.
"The bottom line is society needs identifiers," says Jeremy Grant, coordinator of the Better Identity Coalition, an industry collaboration that includes Visa, Bank of America, Aetna, and Symantec. "We just have to make sure that knowledge of an identifier can't be used to somehow take over the authenticator. And a phone number is only an identifier; in most cases, it's public." Think of your usernames and passwords. The former are generally public knowledge; it's how people know who you are. But you keep the latter guarded, because it's how you prove who you are.
The use of phone numbers as both lock and key has led to the rise, in recent years, of so-called SIM swapping attacks, in which an attacker steals your phone number. When you add two-factor authentication to an account and receive your codes through SMS texts, they go to the attacker instead, along with any calls and texts intended for the victim. Sometimes attackers even use inside sources at carriers who will transfer numbers for them.
For some reason, many of the vendors all but insist I provide them my mobile phone number. I always refuse because I know that once I give out the phone number, my phone will start ringing with telemarketing calls. They vendors say they want the mobile phone number for back-up identification purposes, but I just do not believe them.
And that's caused all kinds of problems with identity theft in recent years. I'm not surprised we are making the same stupid mistake with phone numbers.
Yes, it does, and it's called a passport. Each passport has a unique "book number". The US also issues "passport cards" to passport holders. This is a federally-issued, unique identification card which is considered valid ID.
We also now have Real ID, which is a federal standard for acceptable identification. Real ID-qualified identification cards by definition involve linked databases.
Arguably, however, what is needed online is a uniquely-issued cryptographic signature, which is passphrase-protected. This could actually be used to secure online communications. It could be given out by post offices, which seems logical since they are the place where most people go to process their passport application and because the post office is about communication.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A personal anecdote: I have a GMail account I use at home, everything works well enough (despite the awful interface).
I sometimes want to use it at the local hackerspace, I try to log in, and after I enter my password it tells me "we don't recognize this computer, give us your phone number and we'll send you an SMS message to continue"(*).
I absolutely do not want to give Google my phone number, but there's no way around this.
My account is not compromised, I've got a respectable password, and this didn't used to be a requirement.
Basically, they've lured everyone in with a free service, and now they're drawing in other personal information in order to continue to use it. I fear that one day they will simply decide to require a phone number from my home computer, and then I'll be fucked because I will have to give it to them or else lose all functionality of GMail.
It sucks. They don't tell you how to get around it, they only give explanations of "this is for *your* security!".
Giving google my phone number doesn't increase security, but they've drawn everyone in with the free service.
(*) Also, I have no idea how they "recognize" my home computer, since I regularly delete cookies from my system and re-login. Perhaps the "delete cookies" feature doesn't do what they say it does.
Well, at least you easily can change your phone number if you need to - like an identity theft. Good luck with that if you happen to live where I live where the most common used identification number is our equalient of the American social security number. A number that is more or less impossible to change and that is considered public information by the government.
Setting up Google Authenticator or another TOTP app requires first setting up either SMS, U2F, or Google Search prompts, and printing backup codes. From "Install Google Authenticator":
The phrase "2-Step Verification turned on" links to "Turn on 2-Step Verification", which implies that you'll need to have one of these:
A. A mobile phone to receive SMS.
B. A USB security key implementing FIDO U2F and a desktop or laptop computer running a compatible version of the Google Chrome browser. I haven't tested whether Chromium from a GNU/Linux distribution works as well or whether U2F is one of the proprietary extras included only in Google Chrome. In addition, the U2F key has to have been manufactured in batches of at least 100,000.
C. A phone or tablet with the Gmail or Google Search app installed (which works only on iOS or Android with Google Play, not AOSP alone or Windows Phone). This was introduced fairly recently, and I began using 2FA on Google once it was introduced.
You'll also need to own a second phone as a backup or a printer to receive backup codes.
" But you keep the latter guarded, because it's how you prove who you are. "
nooOoo: when you type in a password, it authenticates the *username*. it does *not* authenticate the *user*.