How do I prevent such scenario from happening? Is there truly a fool proof way of hardware authentication?
By enrolling my spouse and cross registering all keys, both of us are safe. We might loose our keychain, but we will always find each other, even when we are traveling.
This works for Google and GitHub, but not every service allows for multiple keys. But this should be a no-brainer imho.
I think a good with system should include some sort of revocation, like a master key you can keep in a safe to revoke other devices.
But I'm thinking of a revocation scenario, where a key is stolen. In that case the attacker can just remove your keys first.
If the hacker gets your key, and your password it's game over.
But hacking the password will take some time hopefully, and systems usually have retry limits etc. so if you discover your lost key, you hopefully have some time to revoke the lost key.
I personally would not use it for password-less login, as it is only good as a second factor.
If your threat model includes any real likelihood of people capable of stealing your keys and cracking your passwords, then 2FA is only a small part of the opsec you need.
Things like NSA's Zero Trust Security model comes to mind https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26549363
If you're at that level, you probably need specialist infra.
But potential compromises don't mean you're not less secure than before, Yubikey would still make you more difficult to hack.
What about steganography in tattoos? That would be pretty interesting. Perhaps combining that data with a short code or seed that you memorize.
The tech exists. My neighbor works for a company that does encoding of data on packaging. Goal is that every cereal box on the grocery aisle can be individually tracked.
I also don't use my personal key for work stuff and recovering my work key is my sysadmins problem :)
That said, when I had admin accounts at work, we used TOTP with a similar scheme: when we registered important (admin) accounts we shared the second factor (the QR code) between 2 people and sometimes I printed the QR code itself. This works for AWS, gsuite, github, etc. I still receive calls from old colleges for TOTP codes occasionally :)
> you can use the Ledger Nano S with your "seed" (say a 256-bit secret, stored as 24 words you hide), to log in sites using U2F. > Additionally as long as you've got your secret, you can reinitialize your Nano S (or another one) as a new U2F device and there's no need to reset your U2F credentials on the site as the newly initialized device shall work exactly as if it was the old one.
If I read that right, some keys rather than having a hardcoded unique seed, will let you set your own. Which implies you can have multiple functionally-identical backup keys locked up securely somewhere. If true, that significantly reduces key loss anxiety, and increases my interest in hardware MFA.
Anyone know which keys support this (aside from the mentioned Nano S and Trezor)? What's the magic keyword to look for in specs?
you can do a lot with a yubikey but idk if you can actually change the U2F secret
No, you can have a random new value (effectively like you bought a different one), but you won't learn what that is, so it doesn't help you and there's no way to "keep the secret hidden somewhere" except in the sense that it's hidden inside the device where it belongs.
Set your own or generate one for you, using an hardware CSPRNG, and then let you write it down in a convenient way (24 words out of a dictionary of 2048 words, so 264 bits: 256 bits of entropy plus 8 bits of checksum. Heck, you can use 12 or 18 words too. I think the (BIP39 / BIP44) standard even allows for 15 words but Ledger does only support lists of 12/18 and 24 words although don't quote me on that).
> Which implies you can have multiple functionally-identical backup keys locked up securely somewhere.
I don't even bother having multiple devices ready to use. I simply store the seed (once again: as a list of 12/18 or 24 words) on a sheet of paper and I store this in vaults/safes.
> Anyone know which keys support this (aside from the mentioned Nano S and Trezor)? What's the magic keyword to look for in specs?
I've got a Ledger Nano S only for this. It's really a nice little device. I don't work for Ledger btw! They're a bit pricey but, indeed, the anxiety of getting locked out of your account or having through crazy procedures goes away.
It's a pricey little device but not that crazy expensive: about 60 USD I think.
> What's the magic keyword to look for in specs?
I don't know but the U2F "nano app" does work with Google and other sites and I know that Ledger is working on the more recent Webauthn support.
The easy. Add both a security key and OTP (e.g. Google Authenticator). You have 1 rule to strictly adhere: if you click on a link, you MUST use the security key, because that's the one that protects you against phishing. When you don't have your security key, you can just use OTP provided that you typed the url and not clicked on it from email/text.
The strong. You enable 2+ security keys. You keep one in a safe at home. You always use a security key to sign in. On your Google account you can also enable Advanced Protection, that's essentially this plus some extra restrictions to API access.
It’ll be a weekend project to convert over all of my smart home devices and automation away from my primary email account and transition it to a home media account. Then I will turn on google advance protection. Advance protection also puts a delay on logging into the system if you are locked out / some extra restrictions.
Until then I’m just using the key but not advanced protection. If I were starting fresh (a new smart home / google services), I’d make an email just for that and use my original address (a clean name with no numbers from 2004) strictly for mail / financial passwords / high priority accounts. The divide that I would do is smart home / subscription services used by the family gets the lower security one, everything else is high security.
I’d be interested to hear how others deal with this problem.
0. This mostly matters for the accounts that need to be particularly secure (eg email, maybe GitHub or Facebook or Twitter depending on how much you care about them). Also accounts for money if they offer this kind of security.
1. Set up a yubikey. Try to only ever use the yubikey for logging in.
2. Set up some account recovery codes, print them out, put them in a safe place (ie somewhere that you don’t live or work, though you could probably also keep copies there. If you have a folder of personal and account information ready in case you die unexpectedly, put it there too)
3. Set up Google Authenticator on an iPhone so you can get in if you don’t have access to your keys. You should treat these more like the recovery codes than the yubikey—be very careful about entering the name of the website and checking the certificate because they won’t protect you from phishing.
This is something that astonishes me. So many financial institutions still have:
- (low) max length limits on passwords
- restrictions like no special chars in passwords, or exactly this many numbers etc
- over reliance on a pin where a password would be more suitable
- no 2fa, or at best SMS based 2fa
- ridiculous security questions as if someone's favourite colour etc is drawn from a large pool of values
As a developer I can guess that most of these restrictions are probably stemmed from a mountain of tech debt, but I would've expected this to be a priority for such companies. It makes me wonder if they are bound to follow some outdated regulations or something preventing them from doing better
As others have pointed out, account recovery should always be provided in some form. A common way seems to be the use of a one-time password that can be used to regain access.
What I'd really like is a clear best practice for this for developers to implement though. It doesn't help if your authentication method is strong when the recovery option has glaring security holes in it. It now looks like every site that uses WebAuthn just rolls its own recovery solution.
I've settled on OnlyKey (https://crp.to) because it's OSS and you can back it up and restore. Backup can be GPG encrypted.
24 slots, programmable to store URL, U/N, P/W, 2FA, with the ability to click the address bar in a browser, hit a key on the OnlyKey and watch as it types it all in without any other interaction.
It stores MANY types of auth.
Not affiliated, but a very happy user.
It's a device you'll learn more about as you use it, but YubiKey functionality is achieved in a couple of minutes.
The dev managed to answer everything put to them with alacrity. The question of code quality was of no consequence as even ugly code can work, and it's got more eyes on it than closed source.
In my threat theatre this device is far more than adequate for securing GitHub, GOOG, and a couple of GPG/ssh keys.
Should I ever becaome a spy, I'll probably revert to speaking to strangers about how red sparrows fly at certain times of day again.
You can have other forms of authentication — PostIts with backup OAUTH codes, console passwords, root password etc — but those have to stay at home in the vault because a piece of paper in the outside world is too dangerous to lose.
You want both. You’ll lose your hardware keys eventually.
Most services let you register multiple devices. I typically use a Yubikey nano and a regular Yubikey. Then I have a backup on my keyring, but don't have to get it out every time. With WebAuthn becoming more popular, you can also use things like Windows Hello, Face ID, etc. Generally, I try to register all of those methods, and then if one device fails, I still have plenty of backups. But, some services don't let you register multiple devices (AWS comes to mind). In that case, you'll have to make sure you have a backup recovery method. (And those recovery methods obviously reduce the security of your account, SMS is notoriously weak.)
Most services and web sites also give you emergency login codes to print out, though.
But I would suggest SoloKeys instead.
I use these to log into my Linux systems, in combination with a password. pam_u2f was pretty easy to setup.
...which people will still not do, or misplace/erase due to disuse, etc.
Security and availability are always at odds with each other. The question that you should always have when choosing a level of security is "does the risk of denying everyone access --- including myself --- outweigh the risk of someone other than myself gaining access?"
You could also get 2 Yubikeys, but might be out of luck if the website doesn't support that.
(Also, some Android phones can act as a hardware key.)