ubuntu 23.10
I can access my employer’s local network if I authenticate with a 2fa. They suggest proprietary software, but aegis authenticator (found in fdroid) works fine.
The thing is, the phone’s screen is too small and it’s very cumbersome to navigate the screen and to click. It’s so bad I don’t want to use it, because fonts are so small you cannot read anything. It’s like they didn’t even try to optimize the local network for devices.
However, if I could emulate this app on an ubuntu based computer, I’d use it. Can it be done?
you can just use any other OTP application on Linux like https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Authenticator or https://apps.kde.org/keysmith/, they all follow the same protocol
you can export your keys in Aegis and import them in most applicationsOf course there is a KDE app that is feature packed and beautiful and no live being has heard or known about.
Hahahaha so true
At a glance, it looks like Aegis generates standard TOTP tokens, which means there’s a lot of software that can do the same thing, so you don’t need to emulate Aegis. I use pass-otp (an extension to pass), but that’s command-line-only, and a lot to deal with if you’re not already using pass. From a quick search, it looks like Keysmith and OTPClient are decent graphical alternatives. From another quick search, OTPClient is available in Ubuntu 23.10.
Edit: Re-reading your post, your issue is that you don’t like logging in on your phone, right? But Aegis just provides the code, you should be able to use the code from your phone to log in on your computer. TOTP codes are only affected by the secret values and the current time, so the code generated on your phone can be used on any device.
You can also mirror your Android screen via Scrcpy https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy
Open Aegis, go to settings and then disable screen security. (Enabling screen security helps protect against and malicious screen capturing by malware)
From there, it will show your Aegis screen on your PC. It requires ADB access so it depends on if you have that installed or can install it. But the link can get you through that part. :)
Otpclient can open Aegis exports directly.
I would recommend using a native 2fa app for Ubuntu. This answer https://askubuntu.com/a/1460646 recommends keepassxc, which is also a password manager that I personally use for passwords but I’ve not used its 2fa function. I also found this app https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Authenticator
my method for running Android apps on my distro is to run an Android 9.0-r2 VM on QEMU/KVM via virt-manager
maybe this might work for you?
here’s a guide I found for setting up Virt-manager on Ubuntu
and here’s a vid for setting up Android x86 on Virt-manager
- not sure if this is the exact same vid I used but it should suffice
hope this works/fits your use case!
Just use Waydroid instead: https://waydro.id, much lower overhead, however you need to mess with ARM emulation. For installing Google Apps and Device not Play certified: https://github.com/casualsnek/waydroid_script
More info: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Waydroid
That’s pretty neat! I didn’t know about Waydroid till now
however you need to mess with ARM emulation.
not sure about Arch as I’m on NixOS now and the implementation seems to be straightforward but I’ll keep an eye on your note if I do encounter issues
thanks!🤗
There’s nothing special, it can be replaced with any TOTP/HOTP implementation. In particular,
oathtoolis supplied in most distros (it has only command line interface, probably there are also some GUI tools in your repos). However it does not support JSON key format that is provided as QR code for mobile 2FA apps. You have to copy and paste values from it manually.However this will likely violate your employer’s security policy. The point of 2FA is that secret key is stored on a separate device, so that it cannot be stealed together with your password.
I recommend to try other Android apps on your phone. I use FreeOTP+ and have no problems with font readability. Some of my collegues use AndOTP and like it.
Copy the totp seed from aegis and use something like keepassxc to generate the codes
https://github.com/marcopaganini/termotp is a CLI authenticator program with fuzzy find capabilities explicitly designed to work with Aegis export files.
As an IT Technician/Sysadmin I highly recommend you use the one your IT team told you to use. If you run into issues they’ll be able to help but not if your using some obscure app they’ve never heard of.
You might be about to just run a native 2fa application like Authenticator.
Outside of that, Waydroid is an option.
There are surely native totp apps for this on Linux and I haven’t used Ubuntu in a million years but if you really want to do specifically this maybe waydroid.
Firefox has 2FA extensions. Just remember that if both your authentications are on one device, you’re not getting a huge security boost.
No actual answer, but I’d suggest reading your employers computer use policy carefully - for me at least, sharing an OTP secret with an unauthorized application would be a pretty serious policy breach. Probably wouldn’t get fired for it (unless it resulted in an actual breach) but would definitely get a “don’t do that again” letter from HR
Just to add to the QEMU/KVM comment: you can also run an android emulator. The install process is a bit annoying (and contains too many “trust me bro” downloads from Google servers), but it is simple enough and you should be done in around 2h, modulo your uplink.
And at that point, using scrcpy actually helps with the keyboard input.
