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GitHub to require 2FA on accounts by October 6, 2023
(github.blog)
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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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A hardware device is a physical key. Its no different than backing up your home key. Get two keys and copy them. Keep one on you, and the other in a safe somewhere in case you lose the first.
Hardware tokens are specifically designed to resist copying. Any means of copying it would be considered a security vulnerability.
Bits rot. A hardware token kept in a bank vault may or may not still work when I need it 10 years later, and there is no reasonable process for regularly verifying the integrity of its contents. Backup drives' checksums are verified with every backup cycle, and so are the checksums on the file system being backed up (I'm using btrfs for that reason).
Hardware tokens are expensive. Mechanical lock keys are not.
Not literally copy, as in have an extra set of keys. A spare key. A bank vault is total overkill. I just bought 2 fido2 keys and register both for the services that support them. Have one on your keychain and another in your desk. 2FA is often way over thought, any adversary needs both factors so something you know and something you own is plenty for most people.
How will I notice when the spare fails, if it's only a spare and I don't regularly use it? Then I'm down to only one key, and as any grumpy backup admin will tell you, if you have only one copy of something, you have zero copies.
I would have a key plugged into the computer pretty much all the time when I'm working, so anyone who compromises the computer can impersonate me as long as I'm at work. This would be mildly inconvenient to the attacker, but wouldn't actually stop the attacker. And if the computer isn't compromised, how is anyone going to get into my GitHub account even without 2FA? They certainly aren't going to do it by guessing my 16-character generated password or Ed25519 SSH key.
Something-I-know is worthless for authentication in the age of GPU password cracking. Most humans, including myself, do not have photographic memories with which to memorize cryptographically secure passwords. We're all using password managers for a reason, and a password database is something you have, not something you know.