Weeknotes 2026-W25 › Total Deliverance From Microsoft Authenticator! › A fortnight outside the city gates [01LI]

As a result of my MFA device no longer existing, I have been unable to access any University services for the past two weeks, until Monday afternoon. Thank Anil that I divested last year from the “Microsoft Office 365 Copilot App” and got switched to the Lab’s Fastmail contract, or else we would have had a possibly Tripos-shaking catastrophe in the Examination of Part IA! If I had been locked out of my email during this critical time, I honestly cannot begin to calculate the avoidable consequences that would have ensued.

It seems that the hold-up was a…shall we say…total loss of institutional knowledge at the interface between the Computer Laboratory’s helpdesk and the University Information Services as to how to deal with the most predictable failure-mode of MFA. Of course, our local helpdesk is doing great work, and part of the problem is the ever-changing landscape of UIS policies and procedures.

The recovery process was complicated by the fact that I decided I would no longer be willing to use the loathed Microsoft Authenticator app, which is a daily torture to my spirit—every time we comply with the absurd, we transform the absurd into our new reality, our new normal, so it was clear I had to put my foot down. (Interestingly, I think Authenticator used to be a native iOS app, a terrible one to be sure, but now it is an even more terrible fake iOS app with non-native controls and broken scrolling.)

I campaigned to be given a hardware token, but these are forbidden to lowly people like me (unless I were to work in a lab with strong magnets: if I know anyone who has such a lab, let’s find a way to “collaborate”!).