Russian Hackers Circumvent Google Two Step Authentication

Remember the reports that Russian hackers were involved at large in the last US elections? Turns out, they're back at it, and they're more menacing than e'er. This time, they're breaking into Gmail accounts, and they're doing information technology in a way that even Google'south Two Step Authentication isn't able to prevent.

The group of hackers, that calls itself "Pawn Storm" or "Fancy Bear" is sending out phishing emails disguised as warnings from Google, informing people about multiple attempts being fabricated to access their accounts, and recommending that they utilise "Google Defender" – a fake app pretending to be a Google app. When unsuspecting users click on the seemingly harmless "Install Google Defender" link, and and then "Allow" the app access to their Google business relationship, they are inadvertently handing over OAuth tokens to the hackers.

In layman terms, if the hackers have OAuth tokens for your account, their application can access your Google account without ever needing your countersign. Information technology's incredibly worrying, because OAuth is meant to be a convenience, non a nuisance. Experts have e'er warned that OAuth tin can exist used to malicious upshot; and now it has.

Quite honestly, two pace authentication is one of the near secure ways of preventing unauthorised access to your account. It works because it needs not just the countersign, only too a unique lawmaking sent to the user'south telephone, in order to allow access to the Google account. It's important to understand that information technology's non really the two step authentication that's declining hither, it's the cleverness of the phishing set on, and the disability of users to recognise a phishing email, that the hackers don't really fifty-fifty need to worry about ii stride authentication.

Source: https://beebom.com/russian-hackers-circumvent-google-two-step-authentication/

Posted by: collettedomess.blogspot.com

Share this post