I am certainly no expert but I think conceptually they are neat so long as there is another way to access the account if, like you say, you lose the device or something else happens. In the current world of social media and AI, facial login would seem to me to be the furthest thing from secure.
Agreed, they fall into the “something you have” category which is great because it’s harder for a bad actor to obtain them, like they could obtain 2FA keys in some way, example, nullifying their value. But as long as there is a failsafe backup way like you say I like it.
And with Adobe implementing AI into their photoshop tools, like it's great for photo editing and making a smoother work flow but there's always the negative side. And they did say that in the meta data it would show that an image had AI used on it but the everyday consumer of media won't know and or even think of checking into that.
https://www.engadget.com/adobe-adds-generative-ai-editing-to-photoshop-110034887.html
Biometric authentication methods are in general not very secure. Besides the fact there are a whole lot of procedures to fake/ spoof the biometric data. Once breached - you can not change your biometrics that easy. Keys and passwords can easily be replaced.
Further, if you use biometric auth for a lot of services you open your self to a single point of attack - that is pretty similar using the same password for many services. And we don’t do that!
The world should move away from looking at biometrics as a secret. Its not.
I think it's a step in the right direction to get users to adopt MFA. I know too many people that still rely on using the same easy to remember password to login to too many accounts, especially important ones and are too "busy" to set up a password manager or even set up MFA through other methods. Having something built in would be good for them. My only concern is that this is something aimed at newer devices and not too much for legacy devices that may not have a Bluetooth enabled desktop. Of course those are probably now viewed as the not the norm for everyone as now everything is done on newer laptops and phones that have everything built in to use these new technologies.
I also don't like having all my eggs in one basket, like relying on Google to protect my backup codes and MFA options while assuming they will use E2EE while transferring my data, which apparently they've already dropped the ball on their new feature of backing up information into the cloud by default.
Edit: added link to article about Google E2EE problem I mentioned above.
Aye thank you for the info on the lacking end to end encryption at Google Authenticator - I didn’t realize that. Big weak point there in the system.
No problem! And ya for how big a company they are this seems like a pretty big thing to be dropping the ball on and with Google making the zip and mov domains I feel like they must be trolling people or something trying to create more problems in the cybersecurity world but that's up for debate also I guess.
Edit: added link to Medium write up from researcher Bobbyr.
https://medium.com/@bobbyrsec/the-dangers-of-googles-zip-tld-5e1e675e59a5
Thanks for the info about the .zip domain. Totally missed that.
All about cybersecurity. Be nice, no spam!