Microsoft’s recent advisory on Octo Tempest should make every CISO lose sleep. This group isn’t just hacking software vulnerabilities. They’re hacking people, impersonating employees, tricking help desks into resetting passwords, stealing session cookies, and bypassing legacy MFA with social engineering.
And here’s the brutal truth: legacy MFA and authenticator apps are now the attack vector. Microsoft’s own recommended actions no longer even list these outdated methods because attackers are exploiting them every day. Whether it’s through a fake password-reset call, a spoofed login page, or an MFA fatigue attack, once they have a foothold, they can move laterally and quietly exfiltrate data for weeks or months before anyone notices.
We are spending millions on detection, hunting these actors after they’re already inside. But what if they never got inside in the first place?
That’s where Token BioStick and Token Ring change the entire equation. Unlike SMS codes, push approvals, or app-based MFA, Token products simply cannot be tricked. Authentication is cryptographically bound to the real domain. A spoofed site or a fake password-reset request will fail immediately because Token refuses to sign anything that isn’t legitimate. And even if an attacker has the correct username, password, or even physical possession of the Token device, they still can’t log in without the authorized user’s fingerprint and physical proximity.
Octo Tempest thrives because we keep authenticating attackers as if they were employees. The hacker doesn’t need to “break in” when they can just convince someone to approve their login. That entire attack chain collapses with Token. The device is bound to the user and to the legitimate site. No human judgment. No “oops, I clicked approve.” No relay attacks.
The industry needs to stop accepting breaches as inevitable. If we keep relying on legacy MFA and authenticator apps, methods that Microsoft itself is now pushing aside, we are giving these groups the exact tools they need to get in.
It’s time to stop chasing hackers around the network. Close the door. Make stolen credentials and social engineering worthless. With Token, you do exactly that.