Lookup Secrets (Recovery Codes)

Lookup Secrets, also known as Backup Codes or Recovery Codes, can be used to perform 2FA when the user doesn't have access to their selected 2FA method.

Lookup Secrets are:

• server-generated
• valid for a single use
• non-expiring - they become invalid only when the user generates a new set of codes

If you enable Lookup Secrets, users can get a list of codes that they must store securely for future use. This is how it looks in the UI:

note

The example screenshots are captured using the Ory Managed UI.

After the server generates the codes, the user must confirm that they received them. To confirm, the user must have a privileged Session.

If the privileged session expired, the user is prompted to authenticate:

danger

The codes are valid only when the user confirms they received the codes. It is the user's responsibility to generate new secretes before they use all of the available secrets.

Configuration

Follow these steps to enable Lookup Secrets:

Ory Cloud Console

1. Sign in to the Ory Cloud Console and go to Two-Factor Authentication.
2. In the Lookup Secrets section, use the switch to enable Webauthn.
3. Click Save to finish.

Ory CLI

1. Get the Identity Service configuration from your project and save it to a file:

   ## List all available projects
   ory list projects
   
   ## Get config
   ory get identity-config <project-id> --format yaml > identity-config.yaml

2. Find lookup_secret in selfservice/methods and set enabled to true:

   identity-config.yaml

   lookup_secret:
     enabled: true

3. Update the Ory Cloud Identity Service configuration using the file you worked with:

   ory update identity-config <project-id> --file identity-config.yaml

Self-hosted instances

When working with self-hosted instances of the Ory Identity Service (Kratos), add the lookup_secret method to selfservice/methods in the configuration file:

kratos.config.yml

selfservice:
  methods:
    lookup_secret:
      enabled: true

Identity credentials

When the user generates and/or uses Lookup Secrets, Ory adds the following entries to the credentials object of the associated Identity:

credentials:
  password:
    id: lookup_secret
    identifiers:
      # This is the identity's ID
      - 802471b9-06f5-49d4-a88d-5e7d6bcfed22
    config:
      recovery_codes:
        - code: 3zg9abc
        - code: 1bc6bea
          used_at: 2021-10-14T07:38:51Z