Register Additional Authenticators
In some circumstances, you may need to register a new authenticator for a user e.g. when adding a new authenticator or when an administrator acts as another user to replace a lost device.
It is possible to perform this ceremony programmatically.
You can attach several authenticators to a user account. It is recommended in case of lost devices or if the user gets access on your application using multiple platforms (smartphone, laptop…).
With a Symfony application, the fastest way for a user to register additional authenticators is to use the “controller” feature.
To add a new authenticator to a user, the bundle needs to know to whom it should be added. This can be:
The current user itself e.g. from its own account
An administrator acting for another user from a dashboard
For that purpose, a User Entity Guesser service should be created. This service shall implement the interface Webauthn\Bundle\Security\Guesser\UserEntityGuesser
and its unique method findUserEntity
.
You can directly use the Webauthn\Bundle\Security\Guesser\CurrentUserEntityGuesser
as a Symfony service. It is designed to identify the user that is currently logged in.
In the example herafter where the current user is guessed using a controller parameter. This can be used when an administrator is adding an authenticator to another user account.
In the case the current user s supposed to be administrator, the user entity can be determined using the query parameters and a route like /admin/add-authenticator/for/{user_id}
.
Now you just have to enable the feature and set the routes to your options and response controllers.
As the user shall be authenticated to register a new authenticator, you should protect these routes in the security.yaml
file.
The option hide_existing_credentials
should be false
when adding authenticators from a secured area. Set true
when this action is performed by anonymous users.
Now you can send requests to these new endpoints. For example, if you are using the Javascript library, the calls will look like as follow:
Creation Profile
The default
creation profile is used. You can change it using the dedicated option.
Response Handlers
You can customize the responses returned by the controllers by using custom handlers. This could be useful when you want to return additional information to your application.
There are 3 types of responses and handlers:
Creation options,
Success,
Failure.
Creation Options Handler
This handler is called during the registration of a authenticator and has to implement the interface Webauthn\Bundle\Security\Handler\CreationOptionsHandler
.
Success Handler
This handler is called when a client sends a valid assertion from the authenticator. This handler shall implement the interface Webauthn\Bundle\Security\Handler\SuccessHandler
. The default handler is Webauthn\Bundle\Service\DefaultSuccessHandler
.
Failure Handler
This handler is called when an error occurred during the process. This handler shall implement the interface Webauthn\Bundle\Security\Handler\SuccessHandler
. The default handler is Webauthn\Bundle\Service\DefaultFailureHandler
.
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