MFA, 2FA, 2 step validation, etc. are everywhere these days. And it’s a good thing.
Problem with using the phone to get the authentication code is that you need to have it handy at all times (when you want to login at least) and that you have to read the code then type it in (too many steps)
One possible alternative is to use the command line oathtool
Here’s my snippet, I added the following line in my .bashrc
function mfa () { oathtool --base32 --totp "$(cat ~/.mfa/$1.mfa)" | xclip -sel clip ;}
Some preparation work:
sudo apt install oathtool xclip<br>mkdir ~/.mfa<br>
If you want to use the same account with both a phone based MFA generator and the shell, set them up at the same time. Simply use the generated string for setting up the account in the Google Authenticator (as an example) and the add it to the ~/.mfa/account_name.mfa
The use of xclip automatically copies the 6 digit authentication code to the clipboard. You can go ahead and paste it.
The above setup works in Ubuntu. Didn’t try it on other systems.
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