this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2024
25 points (83.8% liked)

Privacy

31975 readers
411 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
25
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

U2F keys can be purchased online for the price of a cup of coffee. They're being touted as the next best thing in online security authentication.

How do you know that the key that arrives at your doorstep is unique and doesn't produce predictable or known output?

There's plenty of opportunities for this to occur with online repositories with source code and build instructions.

Price of manufacturing is so low that anyone can make a key for a couple of dollars. Sending out the same key to everyone seems like a viable attack vector for anyone who wants to spend some effort into getting access to places protected by a U2F key.

Why, or how, do you trust such a key?

The recent XZ experience shows us that the long game is clearly not an issue for some of this activity.

all 6 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Making your own key DIY is the next step

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Where do you get a key for the price of a cup of coffee? The ones I found are quite expensive.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Maybe coffee is very expensive where OP lives

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Interesting question. No answer, but I'd buy a few of these keys, and see whether they act different.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Idk, but I just picked up a flipper 0 and installed some custom firmware and there's a u2f app on it. I was wondering what that was, so thanks for the info, but to your question maybe that could be a solution (idk how that app works yet though, maybe not).