One of the coolest things I've found lately is the Yubikey. This cool little key is a one-time password (OTP) generator that is small, durable, and easy to use. That is the key: easy to use. It provides a 2nd factor authentication without the hassle you usually get with a token or card. That is because when inserted into a standard USB port, it connects as a USB keyboard and types in the 32 character OTP for you. Additionally, the way it generates the OTP is very cool. It actually uses public/private key cryptography to encrypted a small payload of random stuff including a counter and a timestamp and sends that as the OTP. The OTP is then decrypted by the Yubico servers who then verify that the OTP is valid and even who has it. Very elegant.
You can get them from the Yubico website for around $30 or I found Mashed life offers them for less and will even put a colored label on it for you! Mashed Life is an example of a service that uses the Yubikey. They store all your other passwords on their web based service which can be accessed securely using the Yubikey. I tried to get Roboform to support it but they have not yet committed to doing that so I've moved over to Lastpass which is like Mashed life but has browser plug-ins which are very nice. I really like how it works. More on that another day.
Thanks it for now! Get your Yubikey and get secure!
posted by Steve @ 5/31/2009 04:23:00 PM
1 Comments:
Steve, the Yubikey actually uses symmetric encryption (AES-128), not "public/private key cryptography" asymmetric encryption.
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