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by rpadovani 1642 days ago
> In those cases, at the very least always prompt for 2FA for accounts that require it, regardless of if password auth succeeded or not. Don’t tell the user if it was the password or TOTP code that failed.

This still leaks that the account exists and has TOTP enabled tho.

You have to choose if leaking the correctness of the password, or allowing DoS of a login, unless all the accounts have the same MFA.

2 comments

> This still leaks that the account exists and has TOTP enabled tho.

You could mitigate that by prompting for an OTP code on a random but stable subset of nonexistent accounts -- for example, by hashing the provided username with a server-side secret and requesting an OTP if the hash starts with a zero.

First time I see this idea - I like it!
Yes, maybe I should have made that compromise more clear. The alternative I see would be to enforce some form of 2FA for all accounts and always prompt for 2FA. Depending on the system it may make sense.

It’s still way better than leaking a successful password auth.