The OATHAuth extension provides two-factor authentication (2FA) support. It enables MediaWiki users to log in more securely, using authentication codes, security keys, or passkeys, along with their regular password. It uses the OATH (Initiative for Open Authentication) and WebAuthn standards.

OATHAuth supports the following methods of two-factor authentication:

  • Password managers and authenticator apps
  • Passkeys
  • Security keys
  • Recovery codes

OATHAuth also includes experimental support for passwordless login, and provides a 2FA framework that other extensions can plug into.

  • This extension is unrelated to OAuth, which is a different protocol.
  • The former WebAuthn extension has been merged into this extension.

Usage

The help page on Two-factor authentication provides information for end users on how to use this extension.

Some policies explained on Two-factor authentication only apply to Wikimedia projects. However, the basic instructions for using 2FA are the same for any wiki that uses Extension:OATHAuth.

The Special:AccountSecurity page guides users through adding and managing their two-factor authentication methods and recovery codes.

Installation

This extension

comes with MediaWiki 1.31

and later, so you do not need to download it. The remaining configuration instructions must still be followed.

Warning Warning: There is a bug with this extension where it does not update properly from the web (mw-config) updater and must instead use the update.php command line update script (phab:T371849)

Before you install OATHAuth, first install either the GMP php or BCMath php extension. WebAuthn functionality requires one of those two extensions.

  • Download and move the extracted OATHAuth folder to your extensions/ directory.
    Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:
    cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/OATHAuth
  • Only when installing from Git, run Composer to install PHP dependencies, by issuing composer install --no-dev in the extension directory. (See T173141 for potential complications.)
  • Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file: 
    wfLoadExtension( 'OATHAuth' );
  • Run the update script which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.
  • Configure as required.
  • It is strongly recommended to setup caching when using OATHAuth. This will improve performance, but also the security of your wiki if you're using OATHAuth. If you are only running one application/web server and have php-apcu installed, and no specific cache configured, MediaWiki will likely fallback to using APCu. If you are using multiple application/web server it is advised to set up local cluster caching that all hosts can use. Examples include Memcached .
  • Yes Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

Parameters

Configuration Flag Default Value Description
$wgOATHAuthWindowRadius 4 The number of token windows in each direction that should be valid.

This tells OATH to accept tokens for a range of effectively ((1 + 2 * $wgOATHAuthWindowRadius) * 30) seconds. This range of valid windows is centered around the current time. The purpose of this configuration variable is to account for differences between the user's and server's clock. However, keeping it as low as possible is recommended.

$wgOATHAuthAccountPrefix false The prefix used for the OATHAuth user account name and the issuer used for the account.

If false, the value of $wgSitename is used.

$wgOATHExclusiveRights [] Set of permissions that are revoked from users who did not login using two-factor authentication.
$wgOATHRequiredForGroups [] Sets a list of user groups that are required to have two-factor authentication enabled. Use 'user' if you want all logged-in users required to enable two-factor authentication.
$wgOATHSecretKey false
(introduced in 1.45)

Update to 1.45 (or later) and run the

update script

before enabling this feature and running its own maintenance script!

A secret key value for encrypting OATH-related data which should be SODIUM_CRYPTO_SECRETBOX_KEYBYTES hexadecimal bytes (64 chars) in length. This variable is currently considered immutable. Do not publicly set this value. There are a few ways to create a cryptographically-secure, random key value, such as the unix command: $ hexdump -vn32 -e'8/8 "%08X" "\n"' /dev/urandom.

Run maintenance/UpdateTOTPSecretsToEncryptedFormat.php after setting this value to encrypt existing database rows.

Note that it is not currently possible to change this value once it is set, and be able to update existing encrypted codes. See T403180 for more information.

$wgOATHRecoveryCodesCount 10 The default amount of recovery codes to generate for a given user.
$wgOATHMaxKeysPerUser 100 Maximum amount of keys allowed per user.
$wgWebAuthnRelyingPartyID null Configures relying party ID. If not defined, this defaults to your domain .
$wgWebAuthnRelyingPartyName null Configures relying party name. If not defined, this defaults to your sitename .
$wgWebAuthnNewCredsDisabled false If true, new WebAuthn credentials (security keys and passkeys) cannot be added, see T354701 and git #1187476.
$wgOATHAuthDatabase false (deprecated) The database domain. Only used in a multi-database environment. After MediaWiki 1.42, you should use $wgVirtualDomainsMapping['virtual-oathauth'] instead of this option.
$wgOATH2FARequiredGroupRemovalPages [] (introduced in 1.46) An array of page names, where user can ask to have themselves removed from groups that require 2FA (keyed by the group name). The pages will be linked in the notice about 2FA being required for user. If there's no entry for the relevant group, key * will be used.

OATHAuth also adds a key to the $wgRateLimits array to define rate limits for authentication attempts: 

		'badoath' => [
			'&can-bypass' => false,
			'user' => [ 10, 60 ],
			'user-global' => [ 10, 60 ],
		]

Note that the user-global key is available only since 1.35. Earlier versions have to rely on user and perhaps ip-all. See the documentation of $wgRateLimits for details.

User permissions

User right Description Given by default to
oathauth-enable Allows users to configure two-factor authentication on their account, using Special:AccountSecurity. user
oathauth-disable-for-user Enables trusted people to remove two-factor authentication from other user's account, by using Special:DisableOATHForUser. sysop
oathauth-recover-for-user (introduced in 1.46) Users with this right can generate additional recovery codes (using Special:Recover2FAForUser) for other users, helping them to recover access to their account if they lose all their 2FA methods sysop
oathauth-verify-user Allows users to check if another user has two-factor authentication enabled on their account, using Special:VerifyOATHForUser. sysop
oathauth-view-log Grants access to Special:Log/oath, where all administrative operations related to two-factor authentication are recorded. sysop

Administration

Resetting a user token

If a user loses both their token generator and the recovery tokens, two-factor authentication may be removed from the user by running the disableOATHAuthForUser maintenance script: 

$ ./maintenance/run OATHAuth:disableOATHAuthForUser <user>
MediaWiki version:

≤ 1.39

 
$ php ./extensions/OATHAuth/maintenance/disableOATHAuthForUser.php <user>

Where ‎<user> is the name of the user to have 2FA disabled.

Local development

To be able to create WebAuthn keys and log in with them, the wiki must be accessed over HTTPS, even if it lives on localhost. This means that a typical setup where the wiki's URL is http://localhost:8080 will not work, and you will need to set up an HTTPS proxy. If you're using MediaWiki-Docker, follow the HTTPS recipe, then use https://localhost:8443 to visit your wiki. If you're not using MediaWiki-Docker, install Caddy, and put the following in /etc/caddy/Caddyfile: 

localhost:8443 {
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8080
    tls internal
}

This will proxy https://localhost:8443 to http://localhost:8080. If needed, change 8080 to the port MediaWiki normally runs on.

Shared database tables

Some Wikis may want to share the 2FA data amongst multiple Wikis. Shared database tables , the previous method for doing so is deprecated in MediaWiki 1.42 and later. For new wiki-farm installations where you want users to share their 2FA token amongst multiple wikis, please use $wgVirtualDomainsMapping and the extensions will automatically make its tables use the specified database name. 

$wgVirtualDomainsMapping['virtual-oathauth'] = [ 'db' => 'sharedbname' ]

When using shared database tables, i.e., the same set of users for different wikis, add oathauth_devices and oathauth_types to $wgSharedTables. 

$wgSharedTables[] = 'oathauth_devices';
$wgSharedTables[] = 'oathauth_types';

Cross-wiki support

By default, users may only use their security key to log in to the wiki where they initially registered the key. Attempting to log in on another wiki within the wiki family results in an error about an unrecognized key and restricts where the user can log in to only the wiki where they registered their key. Limited support exists for wiki families (those with $wgVirtualDomainsMapping['virtual-oathauth'] configured) sharing the same root domain. System administrators must first configure support for this by defining both $wgWebAuthnRelyingPartyID and $wgWebAuthnRelyingPartyName. The Relying Party ID must be set to your root domain.

  • For example, if you have wikis at a.example.org, b.example.org, and c.example.org, the root domain is example.org and must be set as the ID. The Relying Party name can be anything, but ideally, it should be the name of your wiki family.

Wiki families that cross different domains are supported through the "shared domain" feature in CentralAuth . This is how the Wikimedia wiki family is set up, but this feature is not well documented for third-party reuse at this time.

WebAuthn browser support

A list of all WebAuthn supported web browsers can be found on Mozilla Developer Network. There are some known issues with Firefox on Linux (T415089).

Historical information

The OATHAuth extension originally provided support for TOTP[1], which started as a protocol for generating 6-digit, one-time verification codes, but became more generic over time. The messages in the OATHAuth user interface prefer the generic, more commonly-used terms: "authenticator app" instead of "TOTP", and "passkey" or "security key" instead of "WebAuthn key". However, the extension's code still uses "TOTP" and "WebAuthn" in module names.

The WebAuthn extension was previously a separate module, but it was combined into the OATHAuth extension in 2025.[2]

See also

References

  1. ↑ OATH is the acronym for Open Authentication, which is the organization that created the standards for the HOTP and TOTP protocols that this extension provides.
  2. ↑ T303495
This extension is being used on one or more Wikimedia projects. This probably means that the extension is stable and works well enough to be used by such high-traffic websites. Look for this extension's name in Wikimedia's CommonSettings.php and InitialiseSettings.php configuration files to see where it's installed. A full list of the extensions installed on a particular wiki can be seen on the wiki's Special:Version page.