May 23, 2013

Twitter rolling out two-step authentication for better security


.

Twitter has finally enforced a ballroom dancing authentication feature to stay its users' accounts safer. Security consultants, WHO have long questioned why the short-messaging service didn't supply such a security feature, will currently breathe a little additional simply.

A web log post weekday by Jim O’Leary, a member of Twitter's product security team, explains that users are asked to register a verified number and a confirmed email address. Once that is done, they'll receive Associate in Nursing SMS (text message)containing a six-digit code whenever they loginto Twitter.com.

"In my opinion, this can be owed for Twitter, particularly for verified accounts," city Wisniewski of the net security firm Sophos antecedently told NBC News. "If you are thus darn vital that Twitter goes to verify you, they need some responsibility to create positive that it's you once you tweet."

Wisniewski's words hit notably arduous within the wake of many extremely public, security compromises involving Twitter in recent weeks, once accounts happiness to the Associated Press, CBS, NPR, BBC and alternative news shops were compromised and ill-used by hackers.

When the Associated Press' Twitter account was wont to incorrectly report 2 explosions at the White House Associate in Nursingd an injury to the president, the Dow Industrial Average full-fledged a (short-lived) 140-point dip.

The ballroom dancing (or 2-factor) authentication that Twitter is implementing essentially implies that work into Associate in Nursing account needs two proofs of identity — generally a arcanum Associate in Nursingd a short lived code sent to a cellular phone or generated by an app. This way, a compromised arcanum alone is not enough to lose management of Associate in Nursing account.

It's a log-in approach already employed by Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

And whereas such a rendezvous will keep your account considerably safer, you ought to still heed O'Leary's cautions: "Of course, even with this new security possibility turned on, it’s still vital for you to use a powerful arcanum."

0 comments:

Post a Comment