Beefing Up Security- Google’s New In-app Verification | TechTree.com

Beefing Up Security- Google’s New In-app Verification

Google attempts to fill in the gaps in its security with this new update.

 

On 11th June, Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson’s Twitter account was stolen by a hacker.

Two-step or two-factor verification is an ‘extra layer of security’ that all leading sites use, be it Twitter, Google, or Facebook. It does, in most cases, work well; but it isn’t foolproof, as McKesson found.

In scenarios where you receive a text with a verification code on your phone (which is usually the default setting), a determined hacker can engineer your carrier to forward text messages to their phone by simply calling the customer service and pretending to be you. So in effect, your security is really only as good as the customer service agent working for your service provider.

So once the hacker has tricked said agent, they can log in with your username and password (easily stolen from some leaked database), get your two-step verification code sent to their phone- and voilà, they’re in.

Now, though, Google is fixing this by replacing the six-digit verification code with simple yes/no buttons. This immensely simplifies the verification process; it’s now super-easy, so you really should set it up. It’s going to be available on both Android and iOS platforms, although although iOS users will have to download the Google app in order to take advantage of the new feature.

The update is expected to roll out this week for both.



 


TAGS: Google Security, Hacking

 
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