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Passwordless

Passwordless takes advantage of WebAuthn to provide passwordless and usernameless authentication for Teleport.

Prerequisites​

  • A running Teleport cluster version 15.4.22 or above. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.

  • The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool.

    On Teleport Enterprise, you must use the Enterprise version of tctl, which you can download from your Teleport account workspace. Otherwise, visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh for Teleport Community Edition.

  • Teleport must be configured for WebAuthn. See the Second Factor: WebAuthn guide.
  • A hardware device with support for WebAuthn and resident keys. As an alternative, you can use a Mac with biometrics / Touch ID or device that supports Windows Hello (Windows 10 19H1 or later).
  • A web browser with WebAuthn support. To see if your browser supports WebAuthn, check the WebAuthn Compatibility page.
  • A signed and notarized version of tsh is required for Touch ID. This means versions installed from Homebrew or compiled from source will not work. Download the macOS tsh installer.
  • To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands using your current credentials. tctl is supported on macOS and Linux machines. For example: 
    $ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
    $ tctl status
    # Cluster  teleport.example.com
    # Version  15.4.22
    # CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678
    If you can connect to the cluster and run the tctl status command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequent tctl commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also run tctl commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.

A Teleport cluster capable of WebAuthn is automatically capable of passwordless.

Step 1/2. Register​

Register your passwordless device using tsh:

$ tsh mfa add
# Choose device type [TOTP, WEBAUTHN, TOUCHID]: WEBAUTHN
# Enter device name: bio
# Allow passwordless logins [YES, NO]: YES
# Tap any *registered* security key
# Tap your *new* security key
# MFA device "bio" added.

You may pick either WEBAUTHN or TOUCHID as the device type. Make sure to answer YES to "Allow passwordless logins".

If you are using a hardware device, a passwordless registration will occupy a resident key slot. Resident keys, also called discoverable credentials, are stored in persistent memory in the authenticator (i.e., the device that is used to authenticate). In contrast, MFA keys are encrypted by the authenticator and stored in the Teleport Auth Server. Regardless of your device type, passwordless registrations may also be used for regular MFA.

Important

If you plan on relying exclusively on passwordless, it's recommended to register more than one device. A portable hardware device is ideal, as it can be shared between tsh, the Teleport Web UI, and different computers.

Registering Touch ID for tsh

Touch ID registrations are isolated by application. A Touch ID registration for tsh is different from a registration made from Chrome or Safari. You may register the same Touch ID device from multiple applications to get passwordless access in all of them.

Step 2/2. Authenticate​

Authenticate using your passwordless credential:

$ tsh login --proxy=example.com --auth=passwordless
# Tap your security key
# > Profile URL:        https://example.com
#   Logged in as:       codingllama
#   Cluster:            example.com
#   Roles:              access, editor
#   Logins:             codingllama
#   Kubernetes:         enabled
#   Valid until:        2021-10-04 23:32:29 -0700 PDT [valid for 12h0m0s]
#   Extensions:         permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty

A fully passwordless cluster defaults to passwordless logins, making --auth=passwordless unnecessary. See the next section to learn how to enable passwordless by default.

Web UI

You can also execute passwordless logins in the Teleport Web UI. To do so, look for the passwordless link in the Web UI.

Optional: Enable passwordless by default​

Passwordless enthusiasts may enable passwordless by default in their clusters. Note that this configuration changes Teleport's behavior even for users without a passwordless device registered, so existing users may need to authenticate using tsh login --proxy=example.com --auth=local in order to get their first passwordless registration.

To enable passwordless by default, add connector_name: passwordless to your cluster configuration:

Auth Server teleport.yaml file:

auth_service:
  authentication:
    type: local
    second_factor: on
    webauthn:
      rp_id: example.com
    connector_name: passwordless # passwordless by default

Troubleshooting​

"Allow passwordless logins" doesn't appear​

If you don't see the "Allow passwordless logins" prompt during tsh mfa add, you may be using an older version of tsh. Download the latest tsh from our installation page.

Hardware device not usable​

tsh only prompts for hardware devices with certain capabilities for passwordless registrations. If your device isn't blinking it may not be capable of passwordless logins.

Below is a non-comprehensive list of requirements:

  • Device must support WebAuthn (sometimes also called FIDO2 or CTAP2).
  • Device must be capable of user verification (biometrics or PIN).
  • Device must have a PIN set.
  • Device must have fingerprints enrolled (if biometric). This typically means both a PIN and fingerprints.

tsh relies in an embedded libfido2 to access hardware devices. If you are running on Linux, you may be missing the necessary udev rules to access your device. Try following the installation instructions for libfido2, which may provide you the necessary udev rules.

Touch ID not usable​

If you are having trouble with Touch ID, make sure that you are using the latest standalone version of tsh. Download the macOS tsh installer.

Touch ID support requires Macs with a Touch ID sensor and Secure Enclave. It also requires macOS >= 10.13 (macOS High Sierra).

You can run the tsh touchid diag command to verify requirements. A capable device and tsh binary should show an output similar to the one below:

$ tsh touchid diag
# Has compile support? true
# Has signature? true
# Has entitlements? true
# Passed LAPolicy test? true
# Passed Secure Enclave test? true
# Touch ID enabled? true

Windows Webauthn not usable​

Windows Webauthn support for tsh requires Windows 10 19H1 or later.

You can run the tsh webauthnwin diag command to verify requirements. A capable device and tsh binary should show the following output:

$ tsh webauthnwin diag
# WebauthWin available: true
# Compile support: true
# DLL API version: 4
# Has platform UV: true
# Register successful: true
# Login successful: true

Disable passwordless​

If you want to forbid passwordless access to your cluster, add passwordless: false to your configuration:

Auth Server teleport.yaml file:

# snippet from /etc/teleport.yaml:
auth_service:
  authentication:
    type: local
    second_factor: on
    webauthn:
      rp_id: example.com
    passwordless: false # disable passwordless