We have spent a decade chasing "frictionless" user experiences, but we forgot that friction is what gives us pause when we need it. New research shows that millions of users are at risk from SMS sign-in links designed to make their lives easier. It turns out, when you send a "magic link" via an unencrypted, legacy protocol like SMS, you aren’t just inviting the user in—you’re inviting anyone who can guess a simple URL string.
The arrogance of modern implementation is breathtaking. We are seeing services that use low-entropy tokens (easily guessed by incrementing a number) and links that never expire. This isn't just a technical glitch; it's a fundamental design failure. We’ve treated the phone number as a digital soul-tether, failing to realize that SMS is effectively a postcard sent through a crowd. If the link is the credential and public, the account is no longer yours.
🧠 Vulnerable tokens: Many services use predictable URL patterns that attackers can brute-force in minutes.
⚡ Eternal sessions: Authentication links frequently fail to expire, leaving personal data exposed for years.
🎓 Massive scale: Over 700 endpoints across 177 services were found leaking sensitive financial and identity data.
🔍 False security: "Possession" of a link is being treated as "identity," bypassing the need for actual passwords.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/01/millions-of-people-imperiled-through-sign-in-links-sent-by-sms/
#TechLeadership #CyberSecurity #DigitalIdentity #security #privacy #cloud #infosec #cybersecurity
