2FA in Laravel with Google Authenticator - Get Secure!

Google Authenticator 2-step verification for enhanced Laravel application security

This article will guide you how to integrate Google Authenticator into your Laravel app to achieve two-factor authentication (2FA), significantly improving application security.

Core points:

• Use Google Authenticator and Laravel to implement 2FA, requiring two-factor verification of password and device-generated verification code to enhance account security.
• Google Authenticator Time-based one-time password (TOTP) algorithm that works offline without network connection, is better than other 2FA methods that rely on the network.
• The setup process includes adding specific packages using Composer, updating Laravel configurations, and modifying database migrations to securely store 2FA keys.
• The application process includes routes and controllers that enable, disable, and verify 2FA, ensuring that users can manage authentication settings smoothly.
• Enabling 2FA involves generating a key, displaying the QR code the user needs to scan, and storing the encryption key to the database.
• Verify that the route uses the current limit mechanism to prevent brute-force attacks, and limit the number of attempts per minute to 5 times based on the IP address.

Thanks to SitePoint peer reviewers Jad Bitar, Niklas Keller, Marco Pivetta and Anthony Chambers for their contribution to this article!

Attackers can obtain user passwords through a variety of ways, such as social engineering, keyboard loggers, or other malicious means. Passwords alone are not enough to protect user accounts from intrusion, especially when attackers have obtained credentials.

To overcome this security flaw, two-factor authentication (2FA) came into being. A single password (first factor) is not enough to verify the user's identity. The philosophy of 2FA is that users must use both “the thing they have” (the second factor) and “the thing they know” (the first factor). Passwords are something users know. "What they have" can be in many forms, such as biometric recognition (fingerprint, voice, iris scanning), but these solutions are costly. Another commonly used second factor is the time-based one-time password (OTP), which are generated by the device and are valid at one time. OTP is mainly divided into counter type and time type. Using 2FA is safer than using only username and password, because it is difficult for an attacker to get both passwords and the second factor.

This tutorial will use Laravel and Google Authenticator to demonstrate how to implement 2FA in a web application. Google Authenticator is just an implementation of the time-based one-time password (TOTP) algorithm (RFC 6238), and the industry standard is widely used in a variety of 2FA solutions. Google Authenticator has some advantages that it can be used offline after downloading to a smartphone, while many other 2FA solutions require a network connection, such as sending text messages, push notifications, or voice calls. This does not apply to users whose phones may not be able to connect to external networks (such as offices located in basements).

TOTP works by: the server generates a key and passes it to the user. This key is combined with the current Unix timestamp to generate a six-digit OTP using the key-based hash message authentication code (HMAC) algorithm. This six-digit number changes every 30 seconds.

Settings:

Homestead

This article assumes that Laravel Homestead is installed. Although not required, the commands may be slightly different if you use a different environment (requires PHP 7). If you are not familiar with Homestead but want to get similar results to this article, please refer to the SitePoint article to learn how to set Homestead.

Composer

Create a new Laravel project:

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel Project
cd Project

Use Composer to include the PHP version of Laravel and install a library for constant time Base32 encoding:

composer require pragmarx/google2fa
composer require paragonie/constant-time-encoding

After installation is complete, add config/app.php to the PragmaRXGoogle2FAVendorLaravelServiceProvider::class array in providers and add 'Google2FA' => PragmaRXGoogle2FAVendorLaravelFacade::class to the aliases array.

Scaffolding

Laravel provides scaffolding capabilities to quickly create all controllers, views, and routes needed for basic user registration, login, and more. We will use auth Scaffolding to quickly build the login and registration interface:

php artisan make:auth

We will modify some of the automatically generated code to add two-factor authentication.

Databases and Models

We need to store the key used to create a one-time password in the user's record. To do this, create a new database column migration:

php artisan make:migration add_google2fa_secret_to_users

Open the newly created migration file (located in the database/migrations folder, for example 2016_01_06_152631_add_google2fa_secret_to_users.php) and replace the file content with the following code:

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class AddGoogle2faSecretToUsers extends Migration
{
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->string('google2fa_secret')->nullable();
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->dropColumn('google2fa_secret');
        });
    }
}

Run the migration to set up the database table:

php artisan migrate

Now the google2fa_secret column has been added to the users table, we should update the AppUser model for enhanced security. By default, if the program converts the data of the AppUser instance to JSON, the contents of the google2fa_secret column become part of the JSON object. We will block this. Open app/User.php, and add google2fa_secret as a string to the hidden property.

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Test:

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Conclusion:

By default, the login process and the TOTP setup process are not performed over HTTPS. In production environments, make sure to do it over HTTPS.

This article demonstrates how to add a one-time password to enhance security during authentication and explains step by step how to implement 2FA using Google Authenticator in Laravel.

(The FAQ part also requires a similar rewriting, omitted here)

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