I’m impressed by this little device called the Yubikey which is the creation of a company called Yubico. The Yubikey is a tiny form factor USB authentication device which produces a one time password for authentication purposes. Essentially the Yubikey acts like a keyboard and auto enters passwords which are 32 characters in length (8 characters never change) so in layman’s terms this gives you a 32 characters password which is always different each time you use the Yubikey! (hence the one time pass key).
It should be noted also that you’ll need to authenticate with a Yubikey server. You can build your own in-house server using Yubico’s basic SDK, click here for more info, or you can authenticate with Yubico’s own server using their API.
There is sure to be more Yubikey authenticating servers as support increases.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Matt // Jun 9, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Or you can use yubikey with Mashedlife.com – for regular users like myself who don’t know how to use Yubikey’s ‘API’.
2 wbullockiii // Jun 10, 2008 at 6:30 am
Matt thank you for the comment, very good point that I’m glad you mentioned. For those less tech savvy folks this great solution.
3 Me // Jan 24, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I’d like to use this with my Visa for online transactions at websites like Amazon but these big companies don’t seem to notice.
BTW, the prices have dropped.
They now start at around $25 USD
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