Two Factor Authentication

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:internet-category ]Authentication and security has always been an issue with computers, but with the advent of the Internet and more recently cloud computing, plain old passwords just don’t seem to cut it any more.

I recently had one of my ISP e-mail accounts (which I haven’t used in years) get hacked.  It was a simple password and I guess the brute force of one of the bot nets finally cracked it.  Not a big deal, as I said, the account was dormant and only a couple of old contacts were in it (in fact only one contact was still valid).  I noticed the hack when I received the bounce messages in to my main mailbox and look in to it.

Of course the first thing I did was to re-secure the account.  I didn’t give it much more thought until I saw the announcement from Microsoft that they would be implementing two factor authentication on Microsoft accounts.

At first this seemed like a really good idea,  an application on your cell phone gives you the second factor and away you go.  Then I though about it some more.  While I don’t use many cloud services that I have to logon to each day, every once in a while I do and the thought of having to always have my phone with me and having to run an app just to login seems kind of a pain.

Even if the phone is in your pocket you could still be taking an extra 10 seconds for each logon.  If you do it 5 or 6 times a day, that’s a minute wasted.  Stretch over say 10 years, that eats up 2.5 days worth of time.

And does it really add security?  For weak password protected accounts, certainly.  But if instead of two factor authentication you instead used a longer password would it accomplish a similar goal without causing such an impact in time?  Let’s say I’m a reasonable typist, typing in an 8 character password probably takes 2 seconds, while a 24 character password would only take 6 seconds (probably a lot less once you get use to typing it).  Practically speaking a 24 character password will be impenetrable on any service that is even half way decently configured to limit the attempts at brute force attacks.

It also means I can access my accounts if I lose my phone, or leave it at home or in any other situation where I may not have it with me.

Of course it doesn’t protect people who use easy to guess passwords, but they’re not the people who will use it anyway so while it’s good to have as an option, I don’t think  I’ll be converting over until I absolutely have to.

Opera 15

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:internet-category ]Opera has released their first preview of their Chrome based browser.  The next day they also posted a follow-up to answer some outstanding questions.

First off, let me just say I’ve been a fan of Opera for a long time, back when it was not free software I PAID for it, happily.  I’ve been using it ever since and looked forward to each new release.  Opera 12 is great software.

Opera 15 looks to be a disaster.

It looks more like version 1.5 than 15 and that’s obviously due to the work required to move to WebKit.  Let’s start with the obvious deficiencies:

  • No bookmarks
  • No Opera Link
  • No home page
  • No history list
  • No status bar
  • No customization of the menus
  • No theme’s
  • No Dragonfly
  • No customization of the backgrounds in settings and speeddial
  • No search engine customization (can’t add or remove them)

This makes it impossible for me to use in day-to-day browsing and it doesn’t look any of those items will be addressed in the full release.  The comment in the follow-up post of “more features will come in future versions” could be interpreted either way, future versions of the beta or future versions of Opera (aka 16, 17, etc.).

If they don’t get their act together before 15’s release, I won’t be upgrading and might even drop Opera altogether.  After all, why choose Opera 15, with its anemic feature list over Chrome when they use the same engine?

P.S. Yes, obviously Chrome has its issues too and that whole, let Google track everything you do on the web, thing is a problem, but at least it’s matured to the point of usability.

 

Samsung Press Conference

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]So Samsung is finally going to announce some new phones, that presumably are not the S4 😉

I’m a little suspicious from the announcement that we won’t see a new Windows Phone device, but instead just a new tablet running Windows 8 (maybe 8.1?).  But I really hope we do see something from them.  The Ativ S was a nice phone and Samsung does know how to market their devices.

If they really decided to put in some effort to the Windows Phone space, they could give Nokia a run for their money.

Subscription Apps

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:software-category ]Ok, so let’s have a quick chat about applications that you have to “subscribe” (aka rent)…

Recently Adobe moved their Creative Suite to a subscription only model, while I don’t use Adobe, it is a “tier 1” suite of applications.  Certainly at the same kind of level as MS Office and others so for them to feel comfortable going to a subscription model is something to take note of.

Shortly after that news came out, The Register had an article talking about the possibility of MS Office going subscription only but rightly so Microsoft understands that many users still want packaged software.

Quite honestly, I’m not outright against subscription software, but it’s a hard sell as far as I’m concerned.  Unless you have ongoing development costs associated with the product (like anti-virus) or are deeply discounting the product so that the cost is averaged over 3 years, I see no value in having a subscription.  Most software works quite well without updates for years, why would I give ANY company a monthly fee for what amounts to security fixes.

But lets assume for a moment that all commercial software is moving to a subscription model, Windows, Office, and every other product I use.  What would I do about it?

My first instinct is to say I’d find alternatives.  Linux and Libre Office could handle the bulk of my daily activities, but I have to admit there are a few items I haven’t found a good replacement for.  The most obvious one is Outlook.  I know lots of people only use web-based mail these days, but I just can’t bring myself to use it as my primary interface to mail.  Outlook.com is a big step forward (I really don’t like GMail all that much, it’s just different enough from what I expect mail to be to feel off to me) but it still doesn’t compete with Outlook on the desktop.

Thunderbird, now no longer being actively developed, just doesn’t cut it.  It’s a fine mail program, but Outlook is so much more than just mail.  I’ve thought for years that if anyone really wanted to break Microsoft’s hold on the corporate desktop, they would have to start with an Outlook replacement that did as much as Outlook does.

In the end, I think I would move away from any product that went subscription only.  It might be painful in some cases, but I’d sacrifice some convince rather than support a business model I don’t agree with.