alp

Alp is a convenient - yet secure - authentication method that lets you use your android device as a key for your Linux machine.

!!! IMPORTANT NOTE !!! You are only reading the Google Play Store listing text, please check the main docu page for this app: https://github.com/gernotfeichter/alp to make any use of this app.

The idea of alp is, instead of typing a password on the Linux machine, the user only clicks a button on an android device to confirm an authentication/authorisation request.

I realized that in traditional PC set-ups, the user is confronted with either
- using a secure password that is labour intensive to type or
- using a less secure password that is still annoying to be typed because of the frequency.

Alp attempts to solve that usability problem!

The solution proposed assumes that the user owns an android device that is on the same wifi network. The solution also works if the android phone is the hotspot of the linux machine.

Note that alp does not "remove" your password. Per default the authentication and authorisation process tries to use alp, but as a fallback, the "traditional" fallback authentication and authorisation process - on most systems that will be a password prompt - kicks in. Since alp is using https://github.com/linux-pam/linux-pam, quite something could be tweaked when having knowledge of pam.

This solution works on, and is intended for single user linux machines. Though it should also work for mac users.

In any case, the users also needs to have an android device.

It does not work for machines that are operated by different users, nor is such support currently planned - unless all users are okay to share the same super users password!