Two Factor authentication using NodeJs

3 min readNov 12, 2020

If you have ever dealt with authentication in your application then you must have seen two factor authentication where you have to give a token or code that might be send to you by SMS or email. So lets build something like that and learn two factor authentication.
Before learning two factor authentication lets understand pros and cons of 2FA(2 Factor Authentication)

## Pros of 2FA

1. Provides Security to application.
2. Easy to setup

## Cons of 2FA

1. Involves sharing of Email or Phone number
2. Prone to MIM attack

# Let’s Get Started

=> Create a node project

npm init -y

=> Lets install some dependencies

npm install express node-json-db uuid speakeasy

=> Create a simple Express app

=> Firstly create database here I am Node JSON database you can use any database that you want.

=> Now register the user and create a temporary secret for him.

=> When you will register the user you will get a secret key and token
that will look like this in base32

But you can also go with simple key and it will look like this

=> Now lets verify the user for that you need things one is the userId the user who is trying to login and one is the token this is token is generated in many ways you can use chrome extension that taken secret key from the register process and gives you a token or you can also use mobile apps I am using extension to generate token.