webauthn

WebAuthn Library

This library is meant to handle Web Authentication for Go apps that wish to implement a multi-factor authentication, passwordless, or usernameless solution for users. This library conforms as much as possible to the guidelines and implementation procedures outlined by the relevant specifications and is conformance tested against the conformance tools.

Go Version Support Policy

This library; unless otherwise explicitly expressed; will officially support the latest minor version of go, and will only offer best effort support for versions of go which are currently supported by the go maintainers (usually 3 minor versions) with a brief transition time (usually 1 patch release of go, for example if go 1.21.0 is released, we will likely still support go 1.17 until go 1.21.1 is released). These specific rules apply at the time of a published release.

This library is intended to be used with Go Toolchains as indicated by the toolchain directive in the go.mod.

This library in our opinion handles a critical element of security in a dependent project and we aim to avoid backwards compatibility at the cost of security wherever possible. We also consider this especially important in a language like go where their backwards compatibility when upgrading the compile tools is usually flawless.

This policy means that users who wish to build this with older versions of go may find there are features being used which are not available in that version. The current intentionally supported versions of go are as follows:

• go 1.27
• go 1.26
• go 1.25

Status

This library is still version 0, as per Semantic Versioning 2.0 rules there may be breaking changes without warning. While we strive to avoid such changes and strive to notify users they may be unavoidable.

Quickstart

First run go get github.com/go-webauthn/webauthn and initialize it in your application with basic configuration values.

Make sure your user model is able to handle the interface functions laid out in the webauthn.User interface. This means also supporting the storage and retrieval of the webauthn.Credential struct which can be encoded fairly easily.

Notable Changes

The notable breaking changes made by this library are documented in the release notes. If a substantial breaking change occurs that is expected to be difficult to adapt to it may also be noted in the Migration Guide.

Examples

The examples are documented in the go docs -> webauthn -> examples.

Documentation

The intent is to move all documentation into the go docs, and a good starting place is the go docs -> webauthn location.

Credential Record

Important: It is considered critical that implementers carefully read the webauthn.Credential struct documentation as part of the implementation process.

The WebAuthn Level 3 specification describes the Credential Record which includes several recommended and optional elements that you should store. See § 4 Terminology for details.

Most Credential Record members have a corresponding field in the webauthn.Credential struct. Two do not, and are noted as such in the table below: type is a constant for WebAuthn, and rpId is scoping information you must store yourself. The struct additionally carries several fields with no Credential Record counterpart. Mappings are given for both encodings the struct supports, so the values can be stored as JSON or as MessagePack rather than as columns. Nested fields are written with a dot (i.e. attestation.object is the object member of the attestation object).

For the recommended schema shape, which fields must be written back on every successful FinishLogin / ValidateLogin, and how to store the Relying Party ID and User Handle, see the Storage section of the package documentation.

Flags

It's important to note that the recommendations and requirements for flag storage have changed over the course of the evolution of the WebAuthn specification. We at the present time only make the flags classified like this available for easy storage however we also make the Protocol Value available. At such a time as these recommendations or requirements change we will adapt accordingly. The Protocol Value is a raw representation of the flags and as such is resistant to breaking changes whereas the other flags or lack thereof may not be.

Implementers are therefore encouraged to use func (CredentialFlags) ProtocolValue to retrieve the raw value and webauthn.NewCredentialFlags to restore it; and instead of using the individual flags to store the value store the Protocol Value, and only store the individual flags as a means to perform compliance related decisions.

Storage

It is also important to note that restoring the webauthn.Credential with the correct values will likely affect the validity of the webauthn.Credential, i.e. if some values are not restored the webauthn.Credential may fail validation in this scenario.

Verification

As long as the webauthn.Credential struct has exactly the same values when restored the Credential Verify function can be used to verify the credential against the metadata.Provider. It also takes the protocol.AttestationPolicy and protocol.SignaturePolicy values the ceremony was performed under, which are carried by the webauthn.Config Attestation and Signature fields. This can be either done during registration, on every login, or with an audit schedule.

In addition to using the Credential Verify function the webauthn.Config can contain a provider which will process all registrations automatically.

At this time no tooling exists to verify the credential automatically outside the registration flow. Implementation of this is considered domain logic and beyond the scope of what we provide documentation for; we just provide the necessary tooling to implement this yourself.

Support

This section indicates various support statuses for specific elements of the spec. The level column indicates the spec level this library currently supports for that statement format by the first number, and the number in parenthesis represents when the format was introduced into the spec.

Attestation Format

Extensions

Extensions with a typed input have a dedicated functional option (webauthn.WithExtension<Name>) taking typed Go values, applied via webauthn.WithExtensions (registration) or webauthn.WithAssertionExtensions (authentication); a typed client output is exposed as a field of protocol.AuthenticationExtensionsClientOutputs, and a typed authenticator output as a field of protocol.AuthenticatorExtensionOutputs. An identifier with no dedicated option is not modelled: it can still be set on input with the generic webauthn.WithExtension, which conveys the value to the client verbatim, and any output returned under that identifier is preserved in the relevant Extra map rather than dropped.

Standardized and Specification Listed Extensions:

CTAP 2.1 / CTAP 2.2 / CTAP 2.3 Extensions registered in the IANA "WebAuthn Extension Identifiers" registry:

The CTAP authenticator data also carries a hmac-secret extension output identifier (protocol.ExtensionHMACSecret), distinct from the hmacCreateSecret / hmacGetSecret client-facing identifiers above; it is decoded automatically into AuthenticatorExtensionOutputs.HMACSecret / HMACSecretOutput and is not something a Relying Party requests.

[^1]: This extension is only applicable during Registration. [^2]: This extension is only applicable during Authentication. [^3]: Deliberately not modelled. CTAP 2.3 §12.3 defines no client extension input, output, or processing for largeBlobKey: it is a CTAP response member returned directly to the platform, not to the Relying Party. protocol.ExtensionLargeBlobKey is kept as a documented identifier and remains reachable verbatim via webauthn.WithExtension. [^4]: Not modelled. Set on input with webauthn.WithExtension; an output returned under this identifier is preserved in the outputs' Extra map. [^5]: uvm was deprecated from the core WebAuthn spec text at Level 3 (see the deprecated extensions table below) but remains registered as a CTAP 2.1/2.2/2.3 extension in the IANA registry and is still forwarded by several clients, hence a dedicated option.

Extensions that have been deprecated and removed from the spec. The deprecated level is the first spec level that did not include the extension. These are all technically reachable as untyped values via webauthn.WithExtension, but have no official (typed) support from this library, and are most likely not supported by either browsers or authenticators. The one exception is uvm: it remains registered as a CTAP extension and is modelled, so webauthn.WithExtension rejects it and webauthn.WithExtensionUVM is used instead.

These extensions often either were excluded due to privacy or security concerns, were introduced into the core of the spec as legitimate inputs outside of extensions, or never received support from browsers or authenticators.

Acknowledgements

We graciously acknowledge the original authors of this library github.com/duo-labs/webauthn for their amazing implementation. In particular we'd like to acknowledge Nick Steele who not only created the original library, but maintained it, and has been an active member of the WebAuthn Working Group quite some time. Without their amazing work this library could not exist.