Good news after a harrowing week: Your iCloud account is now (a little) more secure. After popping up briefly and then disappearing—and a highly publicized, unfortunately timed security breach—iCloud's two-step authentication has returned for good, with several important improvements, according to Ars Technica.
In the wake of Nudegate, it was revealed that Apple ID's original two-step verification never protected your backups and was ridiculously easy to exploit. After all the troubles, Tim Cook promised Apple would fix the inherent problems, and now, about two weeks later, they have.
Ars Technica tested the new authentication with Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker and got an unspecified HTTP error—that's good news. However, when they attempted to mine iCloud data on an account that didn't have the new two-step authentication turned on, they were able to get phone data from the most recent backup.
This would probably be a good time to remind you to enable two-step authentication across the board for all your accounts. [Ars Technica]
Update: We're catching some emails about the functionality as well. Very good news!