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Comment on 23andMe tells victims it's their fault that their data was breached | TechCrunch

serial_crusher@lemmy.basedcount.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Is there a standards body web developers should rely on, which suggests requiring MFA for every account? OWASP, for example, only recommends requiring it for administrative users, but for giving regular users the option without requiring it.

There’s some positives to requiring MFA for all users, but like any decision there’s trade offs. How can we throw 23andme under the bus when they were compliant with industry best practices?

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sudneo@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t think it’s possible to make a blanket statement in this sense. For example, Lemmy doesn’t handle as sensitive data as 23andMe. In this case, it might be totally acceptable to have the feature, but not requiring it. Banks (at least in Europe) never let you login with just username and password. The definitely comply with different standards and in general, it is well understood that the sensitivity of the data (and actions) needs to be reflected into more severe controls against attacks which are relevant.

For a company with so sensitive data (such as 23andMe), their security model should have definitely included credential stuffing attacks, and therefore they should have implemented the measures that are recommended against this attack. Quoting from OWASP:

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is by far the best defense against the majority of password-related attacks, including credential stuffing and password spraying, with analysis by Microsoft suggesting that it would have stopped 99.9% of account compromises. As such, it should be implemented wherever possible; however, depending on the audience of the application, it may not be practical or feasible to enforce the use of MFA.

In other words, unless 23andMe had specific reasons not to implement such control, they should have. If they simply chose to do so (because security is an afterthought, because that would have meant losing a few customers, etc.), it’s their fault for not building a security posture appropriate for the risk they are subject to, and therefore they are responsible for it.

Obviously not every service should be worried about credential stuffing, therefore OWASP can’t say “every account needs to have MFA”. It is the responsibility of each organization (and their security department) to do the job of identifying the threats they are exposed to.

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