MFA or 2FA Securing a Raspberry Pi or Linux Server with Google Authenticator

MFA Multi-Factor Authentication otherwise known as 2FA or Two-Factor Authentication is an good way to add additional security to protect against hackers or crackers.

This video explains about what it is and introduces the free 2FA / MFA Google App, Google Authenticator. It explains how this can be installed on a Raspberry Pi, or other Linux system, particularly Ubuntu or Debian based systems.

Google Authenticator is a mobile phone app available for Android through the Google Play store and Apple iPhone through the Apple App Store. It then needs the google-authenticator to be installed onto the Linux computer and for that to be registered as a PAM security module.

Once setup then you can ssh to the computer as normal, but after the usual authentication (typically username & password, but could be key based) then you will need to add the code from the Google Authenticator app.

This provides a significant improvement to the IT Security / Cybersecurity of that particular system.

Here are some of my related videos:
Protecting your password: https://youtu.be/vCbj7bHGK9o
Linux passwords and how to recover forgotten passwords https://youtu.be/MVuKlKLVLpg
Password Cracking with John the Ripper: https://youtu.be/11mROlZ4h_c

For more details see: http://www.penguinfortress.com/security/linux-mfa

Chapters:
00:00 Understanding 2FA / MFA
02:18 Something you have, Something you know.
04:16 Adding MFA / 2FA to SSH
07:28 Installing Google Authenticator on the computer and phone
16:21 Adding Google Authenticator to the sshd pam config
17:50 Configuring ChallengeResponseAuthentication in SSHD
18:53 Example of Google-Authenticator in use
19:56 Problems, solutions and alternatives