One time passwords are very common these days. These passwords are used temporarily for login purposes. One time passwords are also called OTP in the abbreviated form. An OTP is not created by a person but it is automatically generated using an algorithm. For generating the OTP, we have to provide an initial seed. This seed is what makes all the OTP different. An OTP that uses current time as its seed is like TOTP and is used mainly for two factor authentication (2FA) in various websites, for online banking and apps.
But there are other OTPs for which we can specify our own seed. For example, we can generate OTP using a freeware tool called TekOTP. It uses four MD5 and SHA1 as the base algorithm to generate the passwords. TekOTP is a portable application and can be run on any Windows machine.
TekOTP uses four things to generate your one time password – the initial seed, the password/pass-phrase, a sequence number and the algorithm of your choice. The seed can be any set of words or numbers. The password can also be any alphanumeric phrase you can type using your keyboard. The sequence number is just an integer that can be adjusted using up-down spin control. As previously stated, the algorithms can be either MD5 or SHA1.
It can generate two types of passwords – in the six words format or a sixteen character long hexadecimal code. The six words format is easier to remember for a person. On the other hand the hexadecimal format is much more convenient if used in various apps or websites. The generated passwords are automatically copied to the Windows clipboard.
TekOTP also offers a command line user interface (CLI). You can check all the command line parameters available by giving the command tekotp.exe -h which shows the help interface for the application.
You can download TekOTP from https://www.kaplansoft.com/tekotp/.