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I am a newbie when it comes to Two factor authentication. I have the general idea of implementing two factor authentication on a single server. But I was wondering if there is a standard solution for implementing it on multiple servers.

SCENARIO:

So, there a bunch of *nix machines (around 50) for which I want to enable two factor authentication. If I enable 2 factor ssh authentication using google authenticator (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-protect-ssh-with-two-factor-authentication) on all machines, it doesn't seem like a good idea to generate and keep track of individual auth codes. Is there any way I can simplify the whole process.

EX:
Is there a way I can use two factor ssh authentication once and forward it with my ssh requests to all machines? Like a proxy machine which can handle OAuth for rest of my stack? Also are there existing systems/softwares/services in place which, can make the implementation easier? I am open to new architectural designs as well.

Thanks in advance!

PS:
We are currently using ssh-key based authentication on all our machines

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  • You write "use two factor ssh authentication once and forward it with my ssh requests to all machines" - but the core concept of two-factor authentication is that the data from the hardware token is usable only once, or if reusable, only for a very short period. So even if you could do this, it would be pointless - if it worked, it wouldn't be true two-factor authentication. Mary's suggestion is probably your best bet - have two-factor authentication to the only machine that's generally accessible, then use ssh key-based authentication, and ssh-agent on the clients, from then on in.
    – MadHatter
    Aug 4, 2015 at 12:47
  • What you are trying to achieve in a pure security perspective is to install a second lock on your doors so you can open wide all your windows. So with that in mind, I think that project would be better justified if the reasoning was to ease the operation's burden, not to increase security.
    – Alex
    Aug 4, 2015 at 14:34

2 Answers 2

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If your primary goal is to authenticate once and have access to all your machines without having to re-authenticate, you could use hostkey-based authentication from your jump-off host: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-ssh-key-based-authentication-on-a-linux-server.

(Apologies if you already knew about this option.)

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  • Hi Mary, Thanks for replying; we are already using ssh-key based authentication as you said. We wanted to keep the same flow albeit factoring in more security by using two factor over ssh.
    – MaK
    Aug 4, 2015 at 12:26
  • Oh, sorry, misunderstood the objective there. Actually, you can do key+password authentication two ways: one is to put a passphrase on your local key store. The other is to require both a key and a password for the server connection (available since 6.2): sysconfig.org.uk/two-factor-authentication-with-ssh.html
    – Mary
    Aug 5, 2015 at 13:52
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If you have isolated network (no one can use your subnet), you can disable public SSH access for all machines (let us call these as private machines) except one/two machines (public machines).

The public machines have two factor authentication.

The private machines don't have two factor authentication. The private machines SSH port is only accessible from a certain IP (your subnet for example, or public machines IP).

This way is usually people do in AWS environment with public-private subnet. Instances with only private IP only accessible from instances which have public access.

So, whenever you want to access your private machines, you need to login to a public machine first. And then, from there, you can login to any machines.

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