Hacker 10 – Security Hacker

Tag: alternative to yubikey

  • Nitrokey, a thumbdrive to encrypt data, emails and logins

    Nitrokey, a thumbdrive to encrypt data, emails and logins

    Nitrokey is a physical USB thumbdrive developed in Germany to encrypt email with OpenPGP, GnuPG or S/MIME, use One Time Passwords, encrypt your computer hard drive files, manage digital certificates and act as a double authentication token with websites that have adopted the Universal 2dn Factor U2F standard supported by Google services, OpenSSH and WordPress. The hardware design and software code of this encryption thumbdrive has been made open source to allow the review of their security and for developers to be able to integrate their own applications.

    The thumbdrive keeps three RSA encryption keys of up to 4096 bits, they are all linked to the same identity but used for different purposes, authentication, signing and encryption, the keys are hardcoded in the device, this makes it impossible for viruses to extract them, the One Time Passwords are compatible with Google Authenticator and hardware encryption is using the AES256bit algorithm with plausible deniability using hidden volumes.  The dongle comes with a default administrator PIN set to 12345678 that you should change.

    Encryption USB thumdribe NitroKey
    Encryption USB thumdribe NitroKey

    A more expensive version, called “NitroKey Storage“, allows you to store up to 64GB of encrypted data in the device, everything is secured using AES256bit hardware encryption. The USB thumbdrive will work in all operating systems, including Linux, it can be used for authentication as well as encryption.

    If you are worried about a trojan horse in your computer stealing your encryption keys, Nitrokey can stop just that. Carrying your encryptions keys with you in your pocket, instead of having them in your hard drive makes identity theft less likely, and NitroKey’s open source lets you check its firmware integrity, the developers advertise this as a way to thwart the NSA practise of intercepting hardware in the post to implant backdoors on them.

    This is not a very cheap dongle but in line with what encryption thumbdrives normally cost, you can buy a Yubikey for half price but it does not have any encryption abilities other than U2F authentication, Nitrokey offers email and data encryption on top of secure U2F logins.

    The best selling point of this thumbdrive comes in the form of being open source supporting standard security programs. The developers also mention that the key has a tamper-proof design and that you can set up a hidden encrypted container to avoid mandatory surrendering of your data when crossing the border or in countries where it is illegal not to reveal your password to law enforcement.

    Visit NitroKey homepage

  • Hardware authentication systems: Swekey vs Yubikey

    Hardware authentication systems: Swekey vs Yubikey

    A double authentication login system using a hardware key is the best security system for people who travel and/or use public computers at Internet cafés and libraries, there is no absolute way to secure your personal data and privacy on a computer that isn’t yours, there are too many things that can wrong in a networked computer where you do not have administrator rights, outdated antivirus software, hardware keyloggers, network password sniffers, they are all dangers that could be there and you can not effectively protect against any of them.

    Using a hardware token to login into websites, together with a password, even if someone steals the passcode it will be useless for them, most passwords are stolen remotely without the user knowing about it, with a hardware authentication token you are likely to notice the pass key is missing and can then revoke it.

    Swekey double factor authentication system

    The Swekey is an authentication hardware token in the form of a USB thumbdrive, in order to access a web application such as webmail, Internet forum or online banking you need to have Swekey plugged in first and then enter the correct password for the service, this means that if anyone manages to steal your password they will not be able to login because they will still need to have your Swekey.

    The Swekey is not a regular USB key, it generates One Time Passwords, and it can’t be hacked because the private key that is used to generate the OTP scan not be read (physical protection).

    Swekey is operating system and browser independent, compatible with Windows, MacOS and Linux whether you use the Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera browsers. For other more obscure operating systems like Solaris and FreeBSD, Swekey should also work if libusb is present.

    SweKey USB hardware token plugged in
    SweKey USB hardware token plugged in

    When you plug in the Swekey into the USB port your user name is automatically filled in and you are automatically logged out when you unplug your hardware token.

    Swekey is integrated in most popular open source projects like Drupal and Joomla, well known Content Management Systems that power community websites. Internet forums powered by vBulletin, phpBB also support it, and so do open source webmail platforms like RoundCube and Squirrel.

    There are specific plugins for Swekey but it can be used with any OpenID compliant web site, the main problem with hardware authentication tokens is that they need to be supported by the website you use, OpenID already has thousands of sites behind it.

    http://www.swekey.com

    Update 2015: Swekey is no longer in business, link erased.

    YubiKey double factor authentication system

    The YubiKey will calculate a new unique passcode each time it is used making it impossible to copy and illegitimately re-use a passcode.

    To use this hardware token you just plug it into a USB port and it will act like a USB keyboard compatible with Windows, MacOS and Linux. YubiKey has one button on it, that when you press it will generate a one time 44 character password.

     

    YubiKey hardware token plugged in
    YubiKey hardware token plugged in

    In order to log into a website you must have the physical Yubikey token plugged into your machine and press the button on it to generate a new One Time Password. The generated one time password and can’t be reused or copied and pasted, this prevents malicious hacking attacks if someone captures your login credential. This hardware authentication system can also be used at OpenID websites with YubiKey support enabled.

    Why use hardware authentication security

    All of these three hardware security tokens are low cost and highly secure USB authentication that I would consider buying if I had to use multiple shared computers, if you only use your home computer for Internet access, having your antivirus and firewall updated daily and configured correctly together with a good online password manager should suffice enough people.

    The most paranoid can add double authentication for an extra layer of security, I can see its utility for home users too, if someone hacks your favourite website database and gets your username and password out of it they will not be able to do anything with the password without the physical hardware authentication token to login.

    These hardware authentication devices all have a way to revoke the key in case you lose it, none of them uses a battery which makes them highly reliable and they all use a random One Time Password to login.

    I could not see any major differences between these three hardware based authentication systems, prices and security are much the same, probably the most important deciding factor when picking one of them is to make sure that the websites you normally visit have support for the specific hardware authentication token of your liking.