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Have you ever heard? Oh, well, sorry my account got hacked as an excuse for an incredibly inappropriate
post on social media
Well for me, it's kind of becoming the modern equivalent to the dog ate my homework
Especially because so many major web services offer two-factor authentication
to keep intruders out of your account a feature that asks for something else in addition to your password
Typically one of those six-digit codes from an authenticator app on your phone
So you can learn all about how those work up here
But what if you're tired of punching in that string of numbers whenever you log in well
Then you might be interested in a physical security key using the universal two-factor or u2f standard
You see instead of a code that
Changes every 30 seconds u2f relies on a small
Physical chip on a little gadget that looks a bit like a USB flash drive that you can keep on your keychain
Or in some kind of safe location
Typically all you need to do to set one up is tell whichever service you're using that you have a u2f key then
Inserted into a free USB port some of them even support NFC
So you can use them with your Android smartphone and iOS users very recently got support for u2f
Devices over NFC with the UB key neo if you're using an iPhone 7 or newer
So after you insert or tap your key a number of things happen in the background
The key will randomly generate a public and private key pair with the private key
Never leaving the physical u2f key and the public key will get sent to a server
Your key will also send the random number that it picked to generate these keys originally called a nonce as well as a checksum that serves to a server.
As well as a checksum that serves to a server.
To identify that specific physical key
Then when it's time to come back later and log in you enter your username and password
Like you normally would and the server will send you that same nonce and checksum back to your u2f key
along with a different number your physical key will then use the nonce and checksum from the server to
regenerate the private key and since each physical u2f key uses a different secret for key generation
Only the original key you used to register will work
Your u2f key then signs the number that was sent to it with the private key and the result is sent to the server
Which then unlocks it with your public key from your u2f key to allow you to access it
It sounds complicated
But all of this happens without any intervention from the user other than simply plugging in a USB stick and the benefits are
definitely worthwhile because it also
protects against phishing attacks
Numeric authentication codes are definitely way better than having no two-factor protection at all
But they can still be stolen if you accidentally enter them on an imposter website
u2f helps to stop this by using the original domain of the site as part of the
Secret sauce it uses to generate the private key for that account
So if you use your physical key to log in to an attackers website the response it will
Send to that hostile server will be completely useless and the bad guys
won't be able to use it to get into your account and
The companies that make u2f keys have added their own additional security features on top of this base
public key encryption strategy the ever popular YubiKey for example requires you to touch a sensor on the USB stick
Before it authenticates ensuring that there's an actual human trying to gain access and not some kind of malware box
With all of that said as great as this kind of physical security can be
You still need to make sure you don't do anything dumb like drop your keychain in a shady part of town which
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What was he gonna say?
You guys I know what I was gonna say not you. I meant the viewer was supposed to guess subscribe
You know what forget it. I quit