Enabling GitHub Two Factor Authentication

Inspired by Google’s Two Factor Authentication workflow, last month GitHub did the same thing.

I just enabled it, and I strongly recommend that you do it to.

As per the instructions in GitHub’s Two-factor Authentication post, the first step is to go to https://github.com/settings/admin and click on the Set up two-factor authentication’ button:



… which requires the current password to be entered:



In this case I’m going to use SMS:



Next we enter the phone number and click on Send code:



… enter the number received by SMS and click Enable



And that’s it, two-factor authentication is now enabled:



Creating Tokens to access repos (instead of pwds)

Also great from a security point of view, is that it is also possible to create ‘login tokens’ for Https logins.

This is done one the Applications Settings page:



… where new tokens can be created:



… which can now be used instead of passwords (with the great advantage of being revocable and assignable for a particular use (lets say a particular deployment or app))



I really like this functionality, and hope to eventually add something similar to TeamMentor