I am thinking about buying a pair of physical 2FA keys to protect my password manager and sensitive accounts. Which brand and model do you suggest?

If a model with open source firmware doesn’t come with big drawbacks, I’d prefer it, because I may learn from the source code and even contribute to it.

NFC is not necessary, and the keys should be USB-A. A fingerprint reader is welcome if the price doesn’t increase too much.

Thank you all in advance.

  • sparkle_matrix_x0x@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I am fine with a cli, I use arch btw.

    How long have you had your nitrokey? Others are concerned about their durability…

    Have you ever had a yubikey?

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      1·
      15 hours ago

      Others are concerned about their durability…

      Unless I see reports about keys premature end of life I’d put that under FUD.

      Anyway as you did ask few times about this I believe it’s important, and you might be aware of this so apologies if sound condescending, to see keys as something NOT precious. Of course keys are important and they are not cheap… but also you might, in fact :

      • you probably will loose keys
      • you might get them stolen (typically by mistake, somebody taking your entire backpack)
      • you maybe could break them sitting on them (really tricky but OK, why not)
      • you might have some die of “old age” (I’ve never seen that but physical tear does happen, depends on your usage)

      … so what’s IMHO crucial is to have a backup. If you lose your 1 key and you are locked out of your stuff, this is terrible. If you lose your key but you have a backup in a well known to you and secure location, then you login, revoke the other one, move one. Maybe you lost 50 bucks but that’s much better than either being compromise or hours and hours lost in trying and failing to find back the 1 key.

      TL;DR: keys are important but not precious. If they are precious you are doing something wrong.

      Edit: also not for now but keys will inexorably deprecate. You might want post-quantum schemes and even though it is arguably not pressing at the moment maybe the hardware you currently have will not support this. So again, keys are important but should be disposable and replaceable.

    • Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      I’ve only had the nitrokey for a few months, so can’t comment on the durability yet.

      I did have a yubikey before. My experience with them wasn’t great, I often had to re-plug in the key because the touch to activate thing was pretty unreliable for me, often just not responding to touch at all.

      Though ultimately the reason I chose nitrokey is because I was just looking for a European alternative.