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Implementing two-factor authentication using Speakeasy

 const dbConfig = new Config("myDataBase", true, false, '/')


/**

 * Creates a Node-json-db JSON storage file

 * @param {instance} dbConfig - Node-json-db configuration

 */

const db = new JsonDB(dbConfig);


app.use(bodyParser.json());

app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: true }));


app.get("/api", (req,res) => {

  res.json({ message: "Welcome to the two factor authentication exmaple" })

});


app.post("/api/register", (req, res) => {

  const id = uuid.v4();

  try {

    const path = `/user/${id}`;

    // Create temporary secret until it it verified

    const temp_secret = speakeasy.generateSecret();

    // Create user in the database

    db.push(path, { id, temp_secret });

    // Send user id and base32 key to user

    res.json({ id, secret: temp_secret.base32 })

  } catch(e) {

    console.log(e);

    res.status(500).json({ message: 'Error generating secret key'})

  }

})


app.post("/api/verify", (req,res) => {

  const { userId, token } = req.body;

  try {

    // Retrieve user from database

    const path = `/user/${userId}`;

    const user = db.getData(path);

    console.log({ user })

    const { base32: secret } = user.temp_secret;

    const verified = speakeasy.totp.verify({

      secret,

      encoding: 'base32',

      token

    });

    if (verified) {

      // Update user data

      db.push(path, { id: userId, secret: user.temp_secret });

      res.json({ verified: true })

    } else {

      res.json({ verified: false})

    }

  } catch(error) {

    console.error(error);

    res.status(500).json({ message: 'Error retrieving user'})

  };

})


app.post("/api/validate", (req,res) => {

  const { userId, token } = req.body;

  try {

    // Retrieve user from database

    const path = `/user/${userId}`;

    const user = db.getData(path);

    console.log({ user })

    const { base32: secret } = user.secret;

    // Returns true if the token matches

    const tokenValidates = speakeasy.totp.verify({

      secret,

      encoding: 'base32',

      token,

      window: 1

    });

    if (tokenValidates) {

      res.json({ validated: true })

    } else {

      res.json({ validated: false})

    }

  } catch(error) {

    console.error(error);

    res.status(500).json({ message: 'Error retrieving user'})

  };

})


const port = 9000;


app.listen(port, () => {

  console.log(`App is running on PORT: ${port}.`);

});

Next steps

The focus of this article was on implementing the two-factor authentication functionality, mostly on the backend. The entire process is, however, more complex than this. In a normal application, the user would register and choose whether to enable two-factor authentication or not. The next time they log in, we sent their main login identifier, e.g username, to the server to check whether they have two-factor authentication enabled. If they don’t have it enabled, we submit the username and password and sign them in.


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