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# Google Authenticator

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- OATH
- pam_oath
- Identity management

Google Authenticator provides a two-step authentication procedure using one-time passcodes (OTP), initially standardized by the Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH). The authentication mechanism integrates into the Linux PAM system. This guide shows the installation and configuration of this mechanism.

For the reverse operation (generating codes compatible with Google Authenticator under Linux) see #Code generation below.

## Installation

Install the libpam-google-authenticator package, which provides the client program google-authenticator(1) and the PAM module `pam_google_authenticator.so`. The development version is available with google-authenticator-libpam-gitAUR.

## Configuration

This section covers configuring the system's PAM to require Google Authenticator OTP authentication for SSH and, optionally, desktop login.

Note It is required to generate a secret key file for the complete configuration. Consider generating it before editing (and therefore applying) the PAM configuration.

### SSH

Warning If you do all configuration via SSH do not close the session before you tested that everything is working, else you may lock yourself out.

Usually one demands two-pass authentication only for remote login. The corresponding PAM configuration file is `/etc/pam.d/sshd`. In case you want to use Google Authenticator globally you would need to change `/etc/pam.d/system-auth`, however, in this case proceed with extreme caution to not lock yourself out. In this guide we proceed with editing `/etc/pam.d/sshd` which is most safely (but not necessarily) done in a local session.

To enter both, your unix password and your OTP, add `pam_google_authenticator.so` above the system-remote-login lines to `/etc/pam.d/sshd`:

    auth            required        pam_google_authenticator.so
    auth            include         system-remote-login
    account         include         system-remote-login
    password        include         system-remote-login
    session         include         system-remote-login

This will ask for the OTP before prompting for your Unix password. Changing the order of the two modules will reverse this order.

Warning Only users that have generated a secret key file (see below) will be allowed to log in using SSH.

To allow login with either the OTP or your Unix password use:

    auth            sufficient      pam_google_authenticator.so

Enable keyboard interactive authentication in `/etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/99-archlinux.conf`:

    KbdInteractiveAuthentication yes

Finally, reload `sshd.service`.

Warning OpenSSH will ignore all of this if you are authenticating with a SSH-key pair and have disabled password logins. However, as of OpenSSH 6.2, you can add `AuthenticationMethods` to allow both: two-factor and key-based authentication. See OpenSSH#Two-factor authentication and public keys.

#### Request OTP only when connecting from outside your local network

Sometimes, we just want to enable the 2FA capability just when we connect from outside our local network. To achieve this, create a file (e.g. `/etc/security/access-local.conf`) and add the networks where you want to be able to bypass the 2FA from:

    # only allow from local IP range
    + : ALL : 192.168.20.0/24
    # Additional network: VPN tunnel ip range (in case you have one)
    + : ALL : 10.8.0.0/24
    + : ALL : LOCAL
    - : ALL : ALL

Then edit your `/etc/pam.d/sshd` and add the line:

    #%PAM-1.0
    auth [success=1 default=ignore] pam_access.so accessfile=/etc/security/access-local.conf
    auth      required  pam_google_authenticator.so
    auth      include   system-remote-login
    account   include   system-remote-login
    password  include   system-remote-login
    session   include   system-remote-login

Warning success=1 only works if at least one other auth line exists after pam_google_authenticator line. If this is not the case, success must be set to done.

### Desktop logins

Warning Do not log out of the session before testing the result on another console.

The Google Authenticator PAM plugin can also be used for console logins and with GDM. Just add the following to `/etc/pam.d/login` or the `/etc/pam.d/gdm-password` file:

    auth required pam_google_authenticator.so

## Usage

Every user who wants to use two-pass authentication needs to

- generate a secret key file in their home folder, and
- setup their OTP generators accordingly

### Generating a secret key file

Tip Install qrencode to generate a scannable QR. Scan the QR with the authenticator app to automatically configure the key.

The google-authenticator generates a TOTP secret key file as follows:

    $ google-authenticator

    Do you want authentication tokens to be time-based (y/n) y
    generated_QR_code_here
    Your new secret key is: ZVZG5UZU4D7MY4DH
    Your verification code is 269371
    Your emergency scratch codes are:
      70058954
      97277505
      99684896
      56514332
      82717798

    Do you want me to update your "/home/username/.google_authenticator" file (y/n) y

    Do you want to disallow multiple uses of the same authentication
    token? This restricts you to one login about every 30s, but it increases
    your chances to notice or even prevent man-in-the-middle attacks (y/n) y

    By default, tokens are good for 30 seconds and in order to compensate for
    possible time-skew between the client and the server, we allow an extra
    token before and after the current time. If you experience problems with poor
    time synchronization, you can increase the window from its default
    size of 1:30min to about 4min. Do you want to do so (y/n) n

    If the computer that you are logging into is not hardened against brute-force
    login attempts, you can enable rate-limiting for the authentication module.
    By default, this limits attackers to no more than 3 login attempts every 30s.
    Do you want to enable rate-limiting (y/n) y

It is recommended to store the emergency scratch codes safely (print them out and keep them in a safe location) as they are your only way to log in (via SSH) when you lost your mobile phone (i.e. your OTP-generator). They are also stored in `~/.google_authenticator`, so you can look them up any time as long as you are logged in.

#### Storage location

If you want to change the secret key files' storage path, you can use the flag `--secret`:

    $ google-authenticator --secret="/path_folder/username"

Then, do not forget to change the location path for PAM, in `/etc/pam.d/sshd`:

    /etc/pam.d/sshd

    auth required pam_google_authenticator.so user=root secret=/path_folder/${USER}

`user=root` is used to force PAM to search the file using root user.

Also, take care with the permissions of the secret key file. Indeed, the file must be only-readable by the owner (chmod: `400`). Here, the owner is root.

    $ chown root:root /path_file/secret_key_files
    $ chmod 400 /path_file/secret_key_files

### Code generation

In the final setup step, each user has to associate the secret key file generated in their home directory with their choice of OTP-generators to serve the authentication codes. A user may set up generators on different devices for redundancy, for example in an OTP application on a mobile phone and a separate password manager, or decide to rely on the emergency scratch codes generated earlier as backup.

#### Mobile phone generators

Install a generator application on your mobile phone (e.g.):

- FreeOTP for Android (F-Droid, Google Play) or iOS (App Store).
- FreeOTP+ for Android (F-Droid, Google Play).
- Aegis for Android (F-Droid, Google Play).
- Bitwarden for Android (F-Droid, Google Play) or iOS (App Store).
- Google Authenticator for Android (Google Play) or iOS (App Store).

In the mobile application, create a new account and either scan the QR code from the URL you were told when generating the secret key file, or enter the secret key (in the example above 'ZVZG5UZU4D7MY4DH') manually.

Now you should see a new passcode token being generated every 30 seconds on your phone.

If you have Google Authenticator configured with other systems, then losing your device can prevent you from being able to log in to those systems. Having additional ways to generate the codes can be helpful.

#### Code managers

A script that enables the display, generation, storage and management of Google Authenticator codes is provided by gashellAUR. An alternative option is auther-gitAUR.

#### KeePassXC

GUI password manager keepassxc allows associating Google Authenticator codes to its entries, and then it can generate OTP codes and export its keys via QR code.

#### Command line

The easiest way to generate codes is with oathtool(1). It is available in the oath-toolkit package, and can be used as follows:

    $ oathtool --totp --base32 secret_key

On most Android systems with sufficient user access, the Google Authenticator database can be copied off the device and accessed directly, as it is an sqlite3 database. However, at some point in July 2022, the secret column on the accounts table started using encryption. If your database backup does not use this encryption, this shell script will read a Google Authenticator database and generate live codes for each key found:

    google-authenticator.sh

    #!/bin/sh

    # This is the path to the Google Authenticator app file.  It is typically
    # located in /data under Android.  Copy it to your PC in a safe location and
    # specify the path to it here.
    DB="/path/to/com.google.android.apps.authenticator/databases/databases"

    sqlite3 "$DB" 'SELECT email,secret FROM accounts;' | while read A
    do
            NAME=`echo "$A" | cut -d '|' -f 1`
            KEY=`echo "$A" | cut -d '|' -f 2`
            CODE=`oathtool --totp -b "$KEY"`
            echo -e "\e[1;32m$CODE\e[0m - \e[1;33m$NAME\e[0m"
    done

### Testing

SSH to your host from another machine and/or from another terminal window:

    $ ssh hostname
    login as: username
    Verification code: generated/backup_code
    Password: password
    $

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