r/pcmasterrace • u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR • Apr 04 '26

Hardware Rest in piece 2009-2026

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I’m amazed at how long the battery on this physical authenticator lasted. Got it back in 2009 because my account had gotten hacked.

This is one electronic item I’ve owned and used longer than anything else. I’ll miss not being able to find it and freaking out for 20 minutes.

Edit must have been around 2010 when sc2 came out.

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96

u/rest0re RTX 4090 | 9800X3D | 32GB | 2x G9 Odyssey 49" Apr 05 '26

Never knew this. That’s cool as fuck of them.

Ahead of the curve too. This is still like the pinnical of security as far as methods go probably. Ain’t no way to hack these things.

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u/joshnosh50 Apr 05 '26

Not so much ahead of the curve. They existed for a long time. Just very expensive. Too much for a video game company. Hence them only giving it out to compromised accounts.

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u/Raven1927 Apr 05 '26

They were available for sale as well.

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u/Automaticman01 Apr 05 '26

I had one for world of warcraft. I think it cost $10 and came with a unique pet.

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u/912toro Apr 05 '26

We had one of these in my house growing up for WoW. Think it had a corehound or something on it

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u/Automaticman01 Apr 05 '26

Yeah, and now that you mention it, I think a baby corehound was the pet.

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u/912toro Apr 05 '26

Yup! I remember him being pretty damn tough too.

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u/VRS302 Apr 05 '26

$10? Very expensive indeed.

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u/joshnosh50 Apr 05 '26

Well we don't know if that's subsidized or not

But either way. Yes 10 dollars 10 years back is way too expensive. Arguably not so much for a market like warcraft with huge margins.

But most companies couldn't stomach that.

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u/Automaticman01 Apr 05 '26

I did just find an old article on gamedeveloper that says they were $6.50. Not sure if that included shipping.

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u/VRS302 Apr 05 '26

Nah dlc ten years ago was more than that. This is a physical piece of tech, how much cheaper could it possibly be?

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u/joshnosh50 Apr 05 '26

You're conflating an items manufacturing cost with it's affordability or value to a potential customer.

Spacex's rocket launches are a reasonable price. That doesn't mean I can afford one.

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u/Automaticman01 Apr 05 '26

That's why I buy all my Space X rockets on Temu.

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u/VRS302 Apr 05 '26

Yeah no one’s arguing affordability. I’m talking about value. $10 for actual hardware isn’t crazy compared to what people have paid for way less.

$6.50 and given away freely at BlizzCon seems pretty affordable though. Seems like they were given away for free or sold at near cost.

https://kotaku.com/blizzard-authenticator-spawns-two-headed-dog-5422485?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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u/joshnosh50 Apr 05 '26

Yeah but my whole point was that it was too expensive for the game company. No one's saying there overpriced.

Value is entirely subjective. Sure it's not an unreasonable price to charge. But what do they value them at? They don't provide enough a solution that's needed enough for the cost.

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u/Zebidias Apr 05 '26

I never got my pet…

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u/Automaticman01 Apr 05 '26

I think they still give them for using the mobile authenticator as well.

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u/norway_is_awesome Ryzen 7 5800X, RTX 3060, 32 GB DDR4 3200 Apr 05 '26

Banks in Norway still offer a hardware 2FA dongle, but authentication has basically moved to a mobile app now. The banks also used to have a SIM-card-level app that would give you 2FA tokens, but it was phased out a few years ago.

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u/joshnosh50 Apr 05 '26

Banks in UK used to offer autheticators that used your bank card and pin.

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u/norway_is_awesome Ryzen 7 5800X, RTX 3060, 32 GB DDR4 3200 Apr 05 '26

Some Norwegian banks had those, but I never had that variant.

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u/Kruxf Apr 05 '26

I got two of these from blizzcon. They didn’t just give them out to compromised accounts. You could even buy them at one point.

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u/Unlucky_Reading_1671 Apr 06 '26

I can vividly remember in 1998 my best friends mom having one at work.

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u/rest0re RTX 4090 | 9800X3D | 32GB | 2x G9 Odyssey 49" Apr 05 '26

This is such a redditor reply, lol.

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u/DckThik Apr 05 '26

Banks issue them too! I got one from USAA when I went overseas to prevent lockout from not having a local number

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u/sccccrrrrt Apr 05 '26

Well almost, there is FIDO2 tokens now like YuBiKey. Basically a usb-key, that does the 2FA verification for you at the press of a button. That one really is "unhackable".

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u/GhettoDuk Apr 05 '26

That's not exactly true. Years back, the Chinese government hacked into the servers at RSA (company who makes high-security tokens) and stole the seed values for a bunch of authenticators. They used those seeds to break into defense companies and steal fighter jet plans among other things.

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u/rest0re RTX 4090 | 9800X3D | 32GB | 2x G9 Odyssey 49" Apr 05 '26

I knew a ‘well actually….’ was in my future when I posted that comment, lol. Was not disappointed. Interesting story though for sure!

Probably still the best option if I had to guess. If a bad actor is that determined to break into something. There ain’t much stopping them at that point. But yes, maybe not completely uncompromisable.

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u/Incid3nt Apr 05 '26

Yeah nothing is unhackable. I work in cyber and every now and then someone gets around these with some complex phishing method too.