GitHub accounts can now be protected with universal second factor authentication

Oct01

by Sindy Cator on October 1, 2015 at 5:00 pm

GitHub’s authentication system has been expanded, and will now support FIDO universal second factor (U2F) protocol, which asks for a second piece of hardware to authenticate a session. The most notable attack U2F thwarts is the popular man-in-the-middle hack, where information in intercepted and used to access a system or file. To take advantage of U2F, GitHub users will need to purchase a hardware key. While U2F doesn’t require one particular vendor, GitHub is partnering with Yubico — inventor of the popular YubiKey and co-creator of U2F — to offer discounts to GitHub users via a special offer page. The…