Back on the 4th, Linden Lab dropped a new version of the standard viewer. Version 6.5.5.571282 is tagged simply as the MFA Viewer. (MFA = Multi-factor Authentication).
This is part of a multi-stage process to protect Second Life accounts using MFA. Back in September, they announced the availability of MFA for Second Life accounts in this article. The account access through https://secondlife.com has been updated to make use of MFA if you have set it up for your account. If you do not know what MFA is, or if you do and haven’t set it up yet, do read the article!
Once you install the new viewer, assuming your account is set up to use MFA, you will see a prompt for a token from your authenticator app. Enter that, while it’s still good anyway, and you’ll be on your way just like any normal log in. After you’ve done this once, that viewer on that machine will be trusted and you will not be prompted again. If you log into a viewer on another machine, you will.
The idea, of course, is that nobody can gain access to your account unless they have access to both your password and your authenticator app. This single change makes your account much more secure.
Looking over the release notes, there is not a lot else to this release. There doesn’t need to be really, this is an important change by itself. All of the issues flagged as fixed have to do with things that came up in testing the MFA viewer.
Thinking Outside the Plywood Box 