Mobile One-Time-Passwords in Ruby

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About the project

This RubyGem implements the Mobile-OTP standard in Ruby, allowing you to write Ruby (and Rails) powered servers and client implementations. This enables you, for example, to implement strong two-factor authentication into your web application, where your users use their mobile phones as a remote token.

Installation

gem install motp

Server Implementation

For each user, come up with a secret and allow them to specify their PIN. Store both. When they use your system, ask them for the One-Time Pad. They can get this by using their mobile phone (which they’ve already configured with the secret) and entering their PIN.

require 'motp'
Motp::check(secret, pin, otp)

Returns true if the otp is valid for the specified secret and PIN, false otherwise.

OTPs are based on the UTC clock and are valid (by default) for three minutes before and three minutes after they were requested, in order to accomodate the time taken to type in the OTP, and possible variations in the accuracy of the system clocks on the server and the client (mobile phone) devices.

Optional parameters (appended to the end):

  • :time => specifies the time for which the OTP must be valid; defaults to “now”
  • :max_period => specifies the number of seconds of leeway, ahead and behind, during which an OTP is considered valid – defaults to 3 * 60 (3 minutes)

Client Implementation

If you want to write a mobile mOTP client in Ruby, go ahead! The motp RubyGem supports this too.

require 'motp'
Motp::otp(secret, pin)

Returns the OTP for the current time. As with the server implementation, you can pass an optional :time parameter to specify the time for wich you want to generate, but you shouldn’t ever need to do this unless you know the device clock to be incorrect.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

 

 

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