Django-qrauth: QR codes for instantly signing in to a website | Hacker News Reader

Django-qrauth: QR codes for instantly signing in to a website

github.com

39 pointsaruseni34 comments

django-qrauth allows you to easily spice up your website with instant user authentication: once a user has signed in on their Mac or PC, they can pick up their smartphone (or tablet, iPod, etc: actually, anything that has Internet access, a camera and a QR code scanning application should work), scan a QR code (which appears on the display after the user clicks the corresponding link) and immediately sign in on their smartphone or other mobile device they use (so they don’t have to enter the site address, nor their login/email, nor password).

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Good idea, but needs to be abstracted not to require Redis, but use Django's database backends.

Agreed. It seems really un-necessary - Redis for the sake of Redis.

It was probably abstracted from a project that used Redis so it's Redis for the sake of meeting the requirements.

Yup. That is how it was. Of course, if someone will add this and send me a pull request, it’ll be there. Or maybe I will make it myself later (actually, it should be pretty easy to implement).

I can't quite get what this is doing. My impression is that it's trying to make it easy for me to authenticate to a website, using my phone somehow.

My idea for auth with QR codes would work something like:

a) initial setup: user establishes profile with website, including creating a public/private key pair. Public key stays with the service, private key in the user's phone/app.

b) To authenticate, website presents user with QR code containing a token encrypted with user's public key.

c) user scans code with phone/app, decrypts token with private key, signs it, and returns it to service, which verifies token and signature thus authenticating user.

But then all you've done is validated the user on his/her phone... not on the computer displaying the web page with the original QR code. What am I missing?

It is much simpler. It is authenticating the user to a website in a mobile browser, not on the desktop.

0. The user must be already logged in to the website on their desktop via any conventional means.

1. The website generates a QR code with a hard-to-guess URL, unique for the user.

2. The user reads the QR code with their phone, and opens the link in the mobile phone's browser.

3. The URL is unique for the user and hard to guess, so the user can be logged in their mobile browser without asking for an username and password.

Correct. The only thing I’d also like to mention is security.

1. If there are XSS vulnerabilities on the website, an attacker could be able to use iframes (at least if you haven’t set X-Frame-Options to DENY) or XMLHttpRequest to retrieve an authentication QR code and use it to log into the user’s account.

2. Even without any XSS, it is possible that someone who has access to the user’s session (for example, if the user is still logged in on the website, but is away from the computer) could scan the QR code and, therefore, log into the user’s account.

Possible solutions include sending the QR code by email (actually, some users are always logged into their email accounts as well, so this might be meaningless) and prompting the user for their password before displaying the QR code (it is still much easier to type the password on a desktop/laptop computer’s keyboard rather than type the site address + login or email + password on a mobile device’s virtual keyboard).

Related question: Can anyone recommend a QR scanner for iOS that doesn't suck? I use android personally, but was annoyed to learn that most / all iOS apps lock you into a webview when you scan effectively blocking functions like add to home screen and bookmarks.

I think the reason Android works so well is the intent system is well thought out and just works. That just doesn't exist on iOS

That said, for opening links, Google's devised [1] for Chrome-ish on iOS to abstract everything, but I believe (as an Android user and developer myself) that all it takes is a

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:targetURL];

where targetURL is an NSUrl.

Chrome on iOS even allows you to specify a callback URL to return to.

[1] https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/ios-links

After testing countless QR-reader apps, I settled upon i-nigma.

Hands-down, the most mature option for iOS.

Qyu takes a screenshot and display's this and in addition gives you the option to if it is a website open it in a browser.

Is there anything wrong with using the Google Search app? I haven't used QR codes very much, but it's seemed fine for when I have.

!!! Be careful a similar version of this is patent pending. I know the guy that came up with this 3 years ago when he showed us a demo. http://www.eletronic-badge.com

I'm not sure if it's the exact same process though.

Unless you are a patent expert professionally convinced of the legitimacy and relevance of a patent, you shouldn't be promoting sketchy patent claims widely. To do so aids patent trolls in their "willful infringement" claims, and spreads vague FUD that suppresses new ideas prematurely.

Following the advice of Linus Torvalds [1] and other wise, experienced technical leaders, I suggest all working engineers avoid idly reviewing patents or patent claims unless and until a patent expert representing your own interests advises that there is a credible threat of legal action and need to understand specific patents.

Otherwise you're helping trolls and wasting time getting worked up over what is, 99.99% of the time, nothing.

[1] http://lwn.net/Articles/7636/

You, sir, are absolutely right.

There's a similar library which does not depend on django and redis, called quickerauth. https://github.com/williamhogman/quickerauth

Why is this dependent on redis, let alone any database ? Couldn't you just encode the username and expiration date in a URL along with a message authentication code or cryptographic signature over the data? It should scale way better and not involve installing a whole new database.

I like the idea of this but I think something in reverse would be much more useful. For example, a keychain application on the phone that can log the user into a website on any other device by scanning the barcode.

Checkout http://qrauth.com (Disclaimer - it's my app)

You created this account 30mins before to post this?

I didn't even notice the account was green. Trust me, I would have just posted at the top level, I have no need to create fake accounts.....

We are not the same person. I've lurked here for some time and never felt the need to comment before this one, hence the new account. I'm not sure why rpledge would even feel the need to create a fake account anyway, as he says his comment would have been fine in the top level.

web.airdroid.com does that. It is a tremendously useful addition in their case, because most of their users already have devices with a camera.

I've been working on something similar (on and off) for some time too: http://seqrentry.net/

It's currently in the App Store review queue but I would be happy to provide a private build for those interested.

Works on any site, no plugins or backend/server modificatons required.

I'd be very interested in giving this a go when you have an android version ready, what is the best way to get my email address to you?

Unfortunately, I don't have an Android version ready at this time. I hope to have it ready in July. Sorry.

If you're still interested, mail me at info@seqrentry.net and I'll make sure you get a copy as soon as it's in a workable state.

Couldn't someone snap my qr code whilst I wasn't looking and have access to my account on their phone? I think there's some interesting uses of qr codes for authentication, but I'm not sure this is one of them.

The idea behind making it easy to log into sites on your phone easily is nice.

But QR codes are probably a bad way of going about it. The average user just doesn't know what to do with QR codes, and they have poor engagement (at least if you're targeting this at non-Asian countries). How often have you ever seen someone scanning a QR code? They're particularly a waste of space on advertising--where that space could be used to place a URL that people know what to do with.

Perhaps a better way to go about enabling this login process is asking for their mobile number, and then just SMSing them a link to click.

SMSing might be good, but there are also a few reasons not to do so. For example, there are many users who don’t really want to enter their phone number anywhere on the Internet (and it is actually a good point, at least you get more privacy).

A few more reasons:

1. There are always third parties (the SMS gateway, the carrier) when you send SMS messages.

2. You cannot receive SMS if there’s no signal or if there’s no cellular module at all (a frequent use case on tablets, iPods, etc) — just the camera, Internet connection, QR code scanning application. :)

3. Sending SMS messages costs you money. In another hand, QR codes are generated for free. Also, it usually takes more effort to set up (and also it can break — relying on third party services is almost always less solid).

4. SMS messages can be slow (and sometimes you don’t receive a message at all). QR codes, in another hand, are very predictable and usually work pretty well (at least if the camera works correctly).

What are some example use cases for this?

For example, you urgently need to complete some work and at the same time you need to leave your working PC. But it seems to be additional security issue for the website admin.

So, I need a desktop system to log into my mobile device? How often do you need this in the real world?

Does anyone actually use QR codes? I see them everywhere and I never use them.

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