Passwords, MFA, and why neither is enough

Passwords weren’t enough, so we added MFA. Now MFA isn’t enough either. In this Help Net Security video, Karlo Zatylny, CTO/CISO at Portnox, walks through why each layer of identity security has failed and what comes next. SMS codes can be …

March 13, 2026
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LLMs Generate Predictable Passwords

LLMs are bad at generating passwords:

There are strong noticeable patterns among these 50 passwords that can be seen easily:

  • All of the passwords start with a letter, usually uppercase G, almost always followed by the digit 7.
  • Character choices are highly uneven ­ for example, L , 9, m, 2, $ and # appeared in all 50 passwords, but 5 and @ only appeared in one password each, and most of the letters in the alphabet never appeared at all.
  • There are no repeating characters within any password. Probabilistically, this would be very unlikely if the passwords were truly random ­ but Claude preferred to avoid repeating characters, possibly because it “looks like it’s less random”.
February 26, 2026
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WhatsApp is adding another lock to your account

Meta has released WhatsApp Beta for Android 2.26.7.8 through the Google Play Beta Program. The update includes references to password-protected accounts, indicating plans to introduce an additional layer of protection beyond the app’s current authentic…

February 23, 2026
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On the Security of Password Managers

Good article on password managers that secretly have a backdoor.

New research shows that these claims aren’t true in all cases, particularly when account recovery is in place or password managers are set to share vaults or organize users into groups. The researchers reverse-engineered or closely analyzed Bitwarden, Dashlane, and LastPass and identified ways that someone with control over the server­—either administrative or the result of a compromise­—can, in fact, steal data and, in some cases, entire vaults. The researchers also devised other attacks that can weaken the encryption to the point that ciphertext can be converted to plaintext…

February 23, 2026
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