One Time Passwords (OTPs) are an mechanism to improve security over passwords alone. When a Time-based OTP (TOTP) is stored on a user’s phone, and combined with something the user knows (Password), you have an easy on-ramp to Multi-factor authentication without adding a dependency on a SMS provider. This Password and TOTP combination is used by many popular websites including Google, Github, Facebook, Salesforce and many others.
The otp
library enables you to easily add TOTPs to your own application, increasing your user’s security against mass-password breaches and malware.
Because TOTP is standardized and widely deployed, there are many mobile clients and software implementations.
otp
Supports:For an example of a working enrollment work flow, Github has documented theirs, but the basics are:
key,_ := totp.Generate(...)
.key.Secret()
and key.Image(...)
.totp.Validate(...)
.key.Secret()
GenerateCode
function and a counter or
time.Time
struct to generate a valid code compatible with most implementations.GenerateCodeCustom
in either module.totp.Validate(...)
When a user loses access to their TOTP device, they would no longer have access to their account. Because TOTPs are often configured on mobile devices that can be lost, stolen or damaged, this is a common problem. For this reason many providers give their users “backup codes” or “recovery codes”. These are a set of one time use codes that can be used instead of the TOTP. These can simply be randomly generated strings that you store in your backend. Github’s documentation provides an overview of the user experience.
Please open issues in Github for ideas, bugs, and general thoughts. Pull requests are of course preferred :)
otp
is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0