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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Funny enough their own demo (from the parent article) is on a MacBook Air with built-in Touch ID.

Yes but any MacBook Air, not just one you've previously provisioned to recognise your fingerprint.

The selling point here isn't 'yet another external fingerprint reader', it's 'portable fingerprint-authenticated OpenPGP smart card'.

The press release mentions only FIDO2. Where did you get the OpenPGP smart card bit?

I just assumed, but I think you're right that it doesn't. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if it followed, Yubikey's first FIDO key was also just that, but now they all do it.)

My main point though was that it's not a device-specific authentication, or even an external reader for unlocking a secret provisioned onto one or many devices, it is the sole thing needed, so you can walk up to a new device and use it without provisioning it with secrets.

An OpenPGP one would be cool though - replace passphrase with fingerprint.

If they're releasing a fingerprint-scanning version, I'd be surprised if it wasn't available with all the capabilities of the YubiKey 5 (which has OpenPGP support) for people willing to pay.

this is a "roaming authenticator", meaning it is meant to be used across devices. After enrolling it, it may be stored away safely, e.g. in a safe, or used on other devices to log in (or perform crypto operations) with the same credentials.

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