Select students across campus have recently received a frightening email from Ernst and Young informing them of a data breach. While students agonize about their student numbers, half-assed discussion posts, and T-Card balances being leaked, UofT has been working hard behind the scenes to come up with a solution. The Boundary received a special insider report from a board member; “Clearly Duo Mobile isn’t secure enough if hackers are getting in. It was probably the same bastards who hacked the Toronto Public Library!” he grumbled.
The new super-duper-secure multi-factor authentication is called Trio, where you now have to complete even more tasks to confirm that it is, in fact, you, logging into Shibboleth Standard. UofT has already soft-launched the app to a few test students before the big reveal later this month. We were able to talk to one of the lucky guinea pigs, 2nd-year student Dawn Jones. She stated that the app asked challenging riddles and required the use of three different devices to help you log in. Don’t have an Apple Watch? Sucks to be you! In her words, “I doubt anyone would do this much work to hack into someone’s account. Trio has got to be at least 3% more secure than Duo”.
“After putting in my username and password, it took me to a sketchy page where I had to solve the ‘riddles 3’, whatever that means”. Dawn revealed that the first riddle was easy enough to solve, but then it started getting irritating. “I don’t know what’s black and white and red all over, and I don’t understand what that has to do with logging into my class!” she exclaimed after experiencing a particularly intense flashback.
After hours of riddle-cracking, meditation breaks, and a quick power nap, Dawn finally arrived at the final question. After pondering what it could possibly be asking, she realized that “the digits of the one that came before you” was referring to her mom’s phone number. “I thought it was a little weird, but I had a quiz to do!”. She later revealed that the 11:59 deadline had unfortunately passed by the time she got in. “I didn’t care, I was just happy to be done with those goddamn riddles.” Let’s hope they add a “remember me” feature that lasts longer than 7 days this time. (They won’t).