How to add Google Authenticator to my website?

javascript node.js google-authentication two-factor-authentication
georgej picture georgej · Jun 27, 2017 · Viewed 25.9k times · Source

I have a web app that is Angular2 on the front-end and NodeJS on the back-end. I want to allow clients to use Google Authenticator to make their accounts more secure.

How can I implement/use Google Authenticator in my website? I cannot find an API to use or and tutorials to follow or any libraries to use. Where can I find some resources to do this?

Answer

Andrew Rueckert picture Andrew Rueckert · Jun 27, 2017

The key phrase that you're looking for is "TOTP" (Time-Based One-time Password) - and it is a specification, rather than an API maintained by Google.

At a very high level, your backend will generate a secret that it will share with your users' Google Authenticator app. At login, both the Authenticator app and your backend with use the stored secret and current time to generate a single-use key. If the keys match, it means that the secrets match, and the user may be logged in.

The SpeakEasy node implementation seems to be pretty popular on github.

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