Re: [QUESTION]Is it possible that git would support two-factor authentication?

From: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 11, 2021, 13:54 UTC
Message-ID: <7c5df686-79ad-1cd8-6f14-d97e1b88bbfb@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <66e42438fa9311ebaeb60026b95c99cc@oschina.cn>

On 8/11/2021 7:00 AM, lilinchao@oschina.cn wrote:

> Many websites support two-factor authentication(2FA) to log in, like Github, I wander if we can support it in application layer.
> When client clone something, they need  input username and password, it is like a website login process. For security, we can
> enable  2FA during this process.

Typically, this is handled at the credential helper layer, which is a tool outside of the Git codebase that can more closely work with such 2FA/MFA requirements. For example, GCM Core [1] supports 2FA with GitHub, Azure DevOps, and BitBucket.

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-Core

The mechanism is that Git attempts an operation and gets an error code, so it asks for a credential from the helper. The helper then communicates with the server to do whatever authentication is required, including possibly performing multi-factor auth. All of these details are hidden from Git, which is good.

I've CC'd Matthew Cheetham who is the maintainer of GCM Core to correct me if I misstated anything here.

Thanks, -Stolee