How to implement two-factor authentication in PHP?

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by addison , in category: PHP Security , 2 years ago

How to implement two-factor authentication in PHP?

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1 answer

Member

by adan , 2 years ago

@addison 

Implementing two-factor authentication (2FA) in PHP requires a few steps. Here's an example of how you can implement it using the Google Authenticator app:

  1. Install the Google Authenticator library in your PHP project. You can use the PHPGangsta/GoogleAuthenticator library, which can be installed via Composer.
  2. When a user registers on your website or app, generate a secret key for them using the createSecret() method of the Google Authenticator library. Store this secret key in your database.
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$secretKey = $ga->createSecret();
// store $secretKey in the database for the user


  1. Display the secret key to the user and ask them to scan the QR code using the Google Authenticator app. You can use the getQRCodeGoogleUrl() method of the Google Authenticator library to generate a QR code URL.
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$qrCodeUrl = $ga->getQRCodeGoogleUrl('MyWebsite', $secretKey);
echo "<img src='{$qrCodeUrl}'>";
echo "Scan the QR code using the Google Authenticator app";
echo "Secret Key: {$secretKey}";


  1. When the user logs in, ask them for the 6-digit verification code generated by the Google Authenticator app. You can use the verifyCode() method of the Google Authenticator library to verify the code.
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$isValid = $ga->verifyCode($secretKey, $code, 2); // 2 = 2*30sec clock tolerance
if ($isValid) {
    // authentication successful
} else {
    // authentication failed
}


Note that the verifyCode() method returns a boolean value indicating whether the code is valid or not. You can customize the clock tolerance (in seconds) by changing the second parameter. In this example, the tolerance is set to 2*30 seconds (i.e., the code will be valid for up to 1 minute).