I‘ve been using unique passwords and totp for some time but I get uneasy whenever I use my phone as a mfa. The reason is the worry about losing it and potentially getting locked out of my accounts.
Searching for best practices didnt help so far. Thats why I turn to you.
So far I have my password vault and my phone with an authenticator app. I may have stored two backup codes somewhere but I wouldnt find them, ever. Especially not in panic mode.
Since mfa should actually not be on the same device or at least require different things (password and biometrics) I dont think using the totp of my vault is a great idea, right? Or only if I configured the mfa to ask for a pin while the passwords ask for biometrics or something.
If I did this I‘d still lose everything if the vault got lost but thats what backups are for. This solution does not include the mfa (or backup key) to my vault though.
Ideally, I would put it in an actual vault but so the single point of failure probabilities keep increasing.
Any pros here that solve these binds regularly? Whats the best practice? Is there a 3-2-1-backup equivalent?
Edit: btw here is what I found. The encrypted text on paper idea is pretty good but seems very complex. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/76464/best-practices-for-usefully-storing-two-factor-authentication-backup-codes
Use an mfa app which supports import/export of backups. To name atleast one popular open source example: Aegis.
Do backups, than you can always fairly easy and fast restore your backup after loosing a device. Usually thats enough as in most (not business relevant use cases) you do not need mfa within minutes.
If you want to go one step further you can prepare an old phone with your mfa data and store it in anywhere in your flat/house and use it as drop in replacement after loosing your actual phone. Or you could setup your mfa app on a seperate phone of your mom/friends/son/daughter, if you dont have an old phone lying around.
Aegis is so great especially because it allows you to set an automatic backup every time you add a new TOTP. This way, a backup is made immediately after modifying the MFA vault, stored in your phone storage, where it can be grabbed by your synchronization system of choice (e.g., Syncthing), replicating the backup on your other devices, for example. This way, you can rest assured you will always have your MFA vault no matter what.
Thanks for this info! Very helpful!
Do you need to externally encrypt the data or at least you the password field when syncing with syncthing? I mean, the traffic is encrypted already but still doesn’t feel right.
Syncthing encrypts the data, so it will be encrypted when being transferred. However, Aegis can export the vault into an encrypted file, too. So the vault file you will be transferring over an encrypted channel is encrypted itself as well. That means that the vault is secure even when at rest on some device.
I like https://github.com/jamie-mh/AuthenticatorPro open source, Automatic backup and nice UX
Great idea! Thanks will check it out!
The old phone trick is neat as well. I happen to have multiple devices at home. I might just make one a backup.