How does the Google Authenticator app work?
In: Technology
Your phone and the application pre-share a secret, typically via QR code scanner.
Both your phone and the application can take that secret, do some math with it and the current time, and create a new time-sensitive secret.
If you enter the right code at the right time, the app knows you must have the original secret. If you enter the same code a few minutes later, it doesn’t trust that you have the original secret.
One important thing is that the way the math is done, you can’t find out the original secret, even if you have millions of codes.
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