Bypassing 2FA with phishing and OTP bots


Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a security feature we have come to expect as standard by 2024. Most of today’s websites offer some form of it, and some of them won’t even let you use their service until you enable 2FA. Individual countries have adopted laws that require certain types of organizations to protect users’ accounts with 2FA.

Unfortunately, its popularity has spurred on the development of many methods to hack or bypass it that keep evolving and adapting to current realities. The particular hack scheme depends on the type of 2FA that it targets. Although there are quite a few 2FA varieties, most implementations rely on one-time passwords (OTPs) that the user can get via a text message, voice call, email message, instant message from the website’s official bot or push notification from a mobile app. These are the kind of codes that most online scammers are after.

Read more…
Source: Kaspersky


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • OH-MY-DC: OIDC Misconfigurations in CI/CD

    April 4, 2025

    This paper accompanies the presentation “Oh-My-DC,” delivered at DEF CON 32 in August 2024. This article assumes a basic familiarity with OAuth and CI/CD pipelines, including concepts like authorization grants, access tokens and the different stages of a CI/CD workflow. OIDC extends the OAuth protocol by adding a new token to the protocol, enabling applications to ...

  • SonicOS SSL VPN Authentication Bypass Vulnerability (CVE-2024-53704)

    February 12, 2025

    A proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit has been published by security researchers for an authentication bypass vulnerability in the SonicOS SSL VPN component. SonicWall appliances provide virtual private network (VPN) and ‘next-gen’ firewall capabilities. SonicWall formally disclosed and released security updates addressing CVE-2024-53704 on 07 January 2025. Successful exploitation of CVE-2024-53704 could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to ...

  • 20 million OpenAI accounts offered for sale

    February 7, 2025

    A cybercriminal acting under the moniker “emirking” offered 20 million OpenAI user login credentials this week, sharing what appeared to be samples of the stolen data itself. A translation of the Russian statement by the poster says: “When I realized that OpenAI might have to verify accounts in bulk, I understood that my password wouldn’t stay ...

  • Google Chrome extensions targeted by hackers to steal user passwords

    December 30, 2024

    Cyberhaven has confirmed its Google Chrome extension was the subject of a Christmas Eve cyberattack, exposing sensitive customer data like passwords and session tokens. In a statement, the data loss prevention company noted the attack showed signs of being part of a “wider campaign” to target other companies, too. The attack started as many others do ...

  • How the ransomware attack at Change Healthcare went down – a timeline

    December 18, 2024

    A ransomware attack earlier this year on UnitedHealth-owned health tech company Change Healthcare likely stands as one of the largest data breaches of U.S. health and medical data in history. Months after the February data breach, a “substantial proportion of people living in America” are receiving notice by mail that their personal and health information was ...

  • Hackers could take over your email account by stealing cookies, even if you have MFA

    November 5, 2024

    Most of us don’t think twice about checking the “Remember me” box when we log in. When you log in and the server has verified your authentication—straight away or after using MFA–the server creates a session and generates a unique session ID. This session ID is stored in a session cookie (or a “Remember-Me cookie” as ...