By the end of 2023, GitHub will require all users who contribute code on the platform to enable one or more forms of two-factor authentication (2FA). Today, the Microsoft-owned company says only 16.5% of GitHub active users and 6.44% of npm users use 2FA. That’s not a lot, but frankly, less than expected.
“Compromised accounts can be used to steal undisclosed private code or make malicious modifications to that code. This puts not only the individuals and organizations associated with the compromised accounts at risk but also any users of the affected code.
“Therefore, the potential for downstream impact on the broader software ecosystem and supply chain is substantial,” GitHub’s chief security officer Mike Hanley wrote in today’s announcement.
He also noted that the company is working to ensure the extra layer of security doesn’t come at the expense of the user experience. So it’s a long time from today’s announcement to when this will be enforced.
“Our end-2023 target gives us the opportunity to optimize for this,” explains Hanley. Switching to 2FA involves a series of changes to the user experience at the command line and in the GitHub web interface.
Notably, earlier this year, GitHub also introduced mandatory 2FA verification for maintainers of the top 100 npm packages to prevent software supply chain attacks. It plans to expand to the top 500 package maintainers this month, and then to all packages with more than 500 dependencies or more than 1 million weekly downloads.