I’m trying to do the right thing and add 2FA through the BW Authenticator. I’ve installed it on my iPhone 16, and it’s generating codes. When I log into the web application on my laptop to try and add the 2FA, I am directed to a popup with a QR Code which asks me for the verification code. When I get the code from my phone and enter it into the web page on my laptop, I get an invalid token error.
Am I missing something?
@GlennDog Welcome to the forum!
Perhaps you are waiting too long to enter the verification code, or perhaps your laptop or iPhone (or both) have an inaccurate system clock, that needs to be synchronized.
The TOTP codes are only valid for a short amount of time (around 30 seconds), and they require the clocks of all involved devices to be accurately synchronized.
Interesting. Time.gov does say that my device’s clock is off by .401 seconds. I am careful not to enter a code when there are only a couple of seconds left. When I see that the authenticator has less than five seconds, I wait for the code to change so I have lots of time. I will take a look and see about trying to sync the device with the US master clock.
There are two devices involved here: your iPhone (which uses its internal clock to generate the verification code), and your laptop (which uses its internal clock to check that the verification code you entered is valid). Both devices must have accurate clocks for this to work. That being said, I don’t think that a mere 0.4-second difference would make or break the verification, so unless your other device has a larger clock error, there may be something else going on.
The first device to which I referred was the laptop (apologies for not clarifying). The iPhone is even more accurate (only .01 or .02 seconds off). I switched the time server on the laptop to point at NIST instead of MSFT. I’ll see if that helps.