[GUACAMOLE-96] Two factor authentication with Google Authenticator

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Done
• Fix Version/s: 1.0.0
• Component/s: Documentation, guacamole-client
• Assignee: Mike Jumper
• Reporter: L.J. van Ruiten
• Created: 29/Aug/16 06:47
• Updated: 15/Oct/18 05:27
• Resolved: 15/Oct/18 05:27

Description

We have a few critical systems that are accessible through Guacamole and we have had some clients requesting a safer way to login. Two factor authentication is probably the best and easiest way to improve on the current username/password login, and I can imagine that this is something that other companies using Guacamole would also be interesting in this feature.

I already did some tinkering myself and I found that Google Auhtenticator is simple to use, does not require any configuration (like you would with SMS codes) easy to implement and the "client" side of the authentication (the part that generates the codes) is easily integrated into existing apps.

So far I have got Google Authenticator "kinda working". What I did is:

• Started with guacamole-auth-jdbc as base
• Added a secret key to a user account that is randomly generated upon creation. Also added a boolean field to indicate wether TFA is required for loggin in.
• Used the GuacamoleInsufficientCredentialsException to redirect the user the a second screen asking for a TFA code after loggin in with the username and password.

However as said before this only "kinda works" because:
I have only gotten the TFA enable button to appear in the user's managing page, so it can only be enabled by administrators and that's also where I put the secret key shows up, so users can't find it themself.
For as far as I could find the previous point cannot be done with just the guacamole-ext api. Even with the new API that enables you to insert HTML parts, you would also need an API endpoint to provide the secret key or ideally generate a QR code that Google Auhtenticator can read to bind a device to the account (I would like it to appear in the user's preference page).

So in summary if other people are interested I would be willing to contribute this, but I would need some directions and I have a few questions:

• Am I right that it is currently not possible to add an API endpoint just using guacamole-ext to provide the QR codes?
• What would be the way to implement this? Personally I thought that adding these options to the user's page would be the easiest.
• Is this a feature you would like me to work on and contribute?

Issue Links

• Dependency: GUACAMOLE-426 Per-user SSH key
• is duplicated by: GUACAMOLE-272 Add 2FA Support to JDBC Authentication
• is related to: GUACAMOLE-136 Add support for TFA - initially Duo