paper token is a PDF generator to create paper-based OTP (RFC 4226) token.
Hardware tokens are very costly and often require a proprietary infrastructure. (near impossible to find HOTP-compatible hardware token without requiring the linked proprietary infrastructure) Software tokens can be also painful and always require a second device like a phone to operate properly.
Paper is not less secure than a phone running a software token. With a sheet paper and a pencil, you have the control of the token. Do you have the control of your phone and the software running on it?
For a negligible cost, you have a token and you just need to protect that sheet of paper. It's simple.
An OTP is just an one-time password and this recommendation makes a lot of sense for the paper-based token too :
"Simply, people can no longer remember passwords good enough to reliably defend against dictionary attacks, and are much more secure if they choose a password too complicated to remember and then write it down. We're all good at securing small pieces of paper. I recommend that people write their passwords down on a small piece of paper, and keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper: in their wallet. —Bruce Schneier 2005"
- Authen::HOTP
- PDF::API2
- PDF::Table
- Getopt::Compact
perl paper-token.pl --output test.pdf --counter 0 --end 200 --secret 3132333435363738393031323334353637383930 --digits 6
paper token - http://www.foo.be/paper-token/ v0.1
usage: paper-token.pl [options]
options
-h, --help This help message
-s, --secret Secret of the token in hex format - default is RFC 4226 test vector
-o, --output Output filename
-c, --counter Starting counter - default is 0
-e, --end Ending counter - default is 500
-w, --window Window of authentication (one line) - default is 14
-d, --digits Digits showed per OTP value - default is 6 - dec31.6
--man Display documentation
You have various free software solution to run on the server side for the authentication of the tokens. You can have a look at the setting up of an OpenOTP server to work with those paper-based token.
Copyright (C) 2010 Alexandre Dulaunoy, http://www.foo.be/
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.