> but 2FA was both possible and a consideration 18 years ago
You could setup your own dns servers obviously 18 years ago and in fact when starting out in the mid 90's that is exactly what we and many others did. (Criket Liu nutshell books from O'Reilly)
To clarify, the problem here wasn't with their DNS servers, but rather the registrar being compromised. You could run your own DNS servers and still get compromised like this unless you also happen to run your own registrar.
First time I used a 2FA device was an RSA "Safeword Card" which looked like a small handheld calculator and would display a multi-digit code that changed every minute or so. This was in 1998 and it had been put into use before that.
I think Sun Micro had deployed those to all their engs, perh others too. I think it had a PIN which when entered displayed the code which was valid for a min.
I meant SecurID were fairly well established by the early 2000s for VPN access, from what I remember, so I assume they came around at least a few years earlier, which would be the late 90s, they also weren't the only option on the market.