privacyIDEA: Open-Source Multi-Factor Authentication

privacyIDEA is an open-source MFA platform for orchestrating all your multi-factor authentication needs. Secure your entire stack with a flexible, self-hosted solution that puts you in control. As an on-premise platform, your sensitive user data always remains within your infrastructure.

Key Features

• Universal MFA: Add a second factor to virtually any application—from SSH and VPNs to IdPs like Keycloak and web portals.
• Extensive Factor Support: Go beyond simple OTP. We support everything from cutting-edge Passkeys and push authentication to various OTP types.
• Vendor-Agnostic: Connect to your existing user stores (AD, LDAP, SQL, EntraID) without being locked into a specific ecosystem.
• Truly Open: Licensed under AGPLv3 to guarantee your software freedom, always.

Supported Authentication Factors

• 🔑 Passkeys & Hardware: FIDO2/WebAuthn devices (like YubiKey, Plug-Up).
• 💳 Smartcards (PIV/x509): Connect to a Microsoft CA using the ms-ca-service and enroll certificates directly to PIV-compatible devices with our enrollment client for Windows.
• 📱 Software & Mobile: Use the privacyIDEA Authenticator for PUSH notifications, TOTP, and HOTP; for standard TOTP/HOTP, other apps like Google Authenticator are also compatible. TiQR is also supported.
• 📜 Classic & Remote: SMS, Email, SSH Keys, Security Questionnaires, and simple Registration Codes for easy rollout.

Seamless Integration

Enhance the security of your existing infrastructure:

• Operating Systems: Linux (PAM), Windows (Credential Provider)
• Identity Providers: Keycloak, ADFS, Shibboleth, SimpleSAMLphp
• Remote Access: VPNs with RADIUS (OpenVPN, Fortinet, Palo Alto), SSH
• Web Applications: Apache, Nginx, any web portal via our REST API.
• nextCloud, ownCloud
• and more...

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Join the Community

Have feedback, questions, or ideas? Join the discussion on our community forum: https://community.privacyidea.org

Setup

For setting up the system to run it, please read install instructions at privacyidea.readthedocs.io.

If you want to setup a development environment start like this:

git clone https://github.com/privacyidea/privacyidea.git
cd privacyidea
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

You may additionally want to set up your environment for testing, by adding the additional dependencies:

pip install -r tests/requirements.txt

You may also want to read the blog post about development and debugging at https://www.privacyidea.org/privacyidea-development-howto/

Running it

First You need to create a config-file.

Then create the database tables and the encryption key:

./pi-manage create_tables
./pi-manage create_enckey

If You want to keep the development database upgradable, You should stamp it to simplify updates:

./pi-manage db stamp head -d migrations/

Create the key for the audit log:

./pi-manage create_audit_keys

Create the first administrator:

./pi-manage admin add <username>

Run it:

./pi-manage run

Now you can connect to http://localhost:5000 with your browser and login as administrator.

Run tests

If you have followed the steps above to set up your environment for testing, running the test suite should be as easy as running pytest with the following options:

python -m pytest -v --cov=privacyidea --cov-report=html tests/

Contributing

There are a lot of different ways to contribute to privacyIDEA, even if you are not a developer.

If you found a security vulnerability please report it to [email protected].

You can find detailed information about contributing here: https://github.com/privacyidea/privacyidea/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Code structure

The database models are defined in models.py and tested in tests/test_db_model.py.

Based on the database models there are the libraries lib/config.py which is responsible for basic configuration in the database table config. And the library lib/resolver.py which provides functions for the database table resolver. This is tested in tests/test_lib_resolver.py.

Based on the resolver there is the library lib/realm.py which provides functions for the database table realm. Several resolvers are combined into a realm.

Based on the realm there is the library lib/user.py which provides functions for users. There is no database table user, since users are dynamically read from the user sources like SQL, LDAP, SCIM or flat files.

Subscriptions and limitations of community edition

Using privacyIDEA Server and the privacyIDEA FreeRADIUS plugin there is technically no limitation of the community edition or the code in this repository. Admins will receive a welcome message about possible support, if more than 50 users are enrolled.

Plugins

The privacyIDEA project also provides several plugins for 3rd party applications like SSO Identity Providers or Windows Login.

Plugins can be limited in the number of users. I.e. the plugin will complain, if the total number of users in privacyIDEA with an active token exceeds a certain limit. There is a certain base number of users, with which the plugin will work. To enhance this number, you will need a subscription. In some cases an additional demo subscription can be found in the release list of the corresponding github plugin repository, you can get a subscription from the company NetKnights or if you have a very good understanding of this Open Source code, you could create a subscription on your own.

Plugin	Number of users
Name	contained	in demo subscription
Keycloak	10000	N/A
SimpleSAMLphp	10000	N/A
Shibboleth	10000	N/A
ADFS	50	50
privacyIDEA PAM	10000	N/A
Credential Provider	50	50
nextCloud	50	N/A
ownCloud	50	N/A
LDAP proxy	50	N/A

Versioning

privacyIDEA adheres to Semantic Versioning.