Finally cracked the 2FA lockout loop at my job after 6 weeks of pain

I work at a small marketing firm in Austin and we use this clunky VPN that triggers 2FA every time you blink. For weeks I kept getting locked out because the token would expire while I was still typing my password. Support told me to just 'be faster' which is useless. Then I noticed if I request the 2FA code first, copy it to my clipboard, and THEN log in, I have plenty of time before it expires. It sounds dumb but it cut my lockouts from 3 times a day to zero. Took me 6 weeks to figure out because nobody else in my department had the same issue. Anyone else deal with a stupid 2FA timing problem like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

danielw881mo ago

Hold on, let me play devil's advocate here for a sec. Is this really that bad? I mean, I've seen auth systems that time out in like 10 seconds, and your token lasts long enough to copy and paste it. Try doing that with a one-time code that expires before your keyboard buffer even updates. @the_margaret makes a good point but honestly, six weeks for a clipboard trick? You probably could've just talked to IT and asked them to extend the token timeout for your account. That would've taken 10 minutes instead of 6 weeks of trial and error.

julia_miller241mo ago

What a silly fix, but @danielw88 it worked way better than talking to IT ever would.

the_margaret1mo ago

Oh man, that timing thing is brutal! Props to you for figuring out the clipboard workaround, that's actually pretty clever.