Ars Technica has an interesting write-up on an apparently successful compromise of Google’s two-factor authentication technology. Though in this case, the culprit wasn’t any system Google deployed or managed, but a gullible customer support representative working for the victim’s cell phone carrier. According to this post over at Facebook-for-hipsters site Ello.co, Grant Blakeman woke up on a recent Saturday morning to find that his Google account had been hijacked – despite the fact that he used Google’s two-factor authentication to protect access to the account. How? Blakeman enlisted the help of none-other than Mat Honan, whose own struggles with account hijacking became the subject of a much-cited Wired feature article. As with Honan, Blakeman’s valuable three-character Instagram account, @gb, appears to have been the lure for hackers. (Honan’s @mat Twitter account was what lured his attackers.) Read “Researchers sidestep Paypal Two-Factor Authentication.” After a conversation with Honan, Blakeman contacted his cell provider and […]
