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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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I'm not sure how much MFA would have mattered in this case.
23andme login is an email address. Most MFAs seem to use email as an option these days. If they're already reusing passwords, the bad actor already has a password to use for their emails that's likely going to work for the accounts that were affected. Would it have brought it down? Sure, but doesn't seem like it would've been the silver bullet that everyone thinks it is.
It's a big enough detractor to make it cumbersome. It's not that easy to automate pulling an MFA code from an email when there are different providers involved and all that. The people that pulled this off pulled it off via a botnet and I would be very surprised if that botnet was able to recognize an MFA login and also login, get the code, enter it, and then proceed. It seems like more effort than it's worth at that point.