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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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Yubikey for 2Fa codes also works well for
sudoandsu(2Fa) or if you still use Windows I think it supports single sign on there. Absolutely worth the purchase have had my keys for years.Can you explain a little more how you handle them in your daily life? I always liked the idea if Yubikeys, but I am a bit worried that I just would switch back to my phone (Aegis) for convenience. Things like:
Are there accounts that you didn't get to work? Do you have separate keys for personal and work accounts? Do you just have it on your keychain an plug it in whenever you need it? Because always plugged in keys in your phone or laptop doesn't really make sense. As far as I know you can't just clone a key. How easy is it to setup a backup key? Does this work for all accounts? I try to not use my phone for critical stuff, but there are times I have to just check an account. Do you use your phone with Yubikeys? How is your experience? USB or NFC?
I have two Yubikey 5 NFC’s, one I keep majority of my 2Fa auth codes on and keep on my keychain the other I leave at home mainly for backup 2Fa setups or desktop/WebAUTH/Single Sign-On logins, most websites won’t let you setup 2 2Fa keys so the second one mostly handles the plug-in and touch key portion of my setup.
Are they inconvenient? Yes, the amount of times where I got annoyed because I’ve had to grab my keychain to sign in has gotten annoying but not enough to switch back to online providers. I prioritized security over convenience in this circumstance. The Yubikey that I keep on my keychain also handles my work 2Fa codes, doesn’t feel necessary to have a dedicated key for that unless my company is willing to pay for it.
It actually works out quite nice having it plugged in all the time, especially if you’re doing multiple 2Fa authentications, the keys won’t authenticate until you enter the password of the key (if you set one up) and touch the key, so even if your computer is compromised they still need to physically touch the key to generate the authentication codes.
So no you cannot clone a Yubikey to another Yubikey, which I think is dumb, but they have their security reasoning behind it I believe. Like I mentioned earlier all my 2Fa codes/keys are on my keychain so if I break that key I am in a horrible position as I lose access to a lot of accounts that I couldn’t setup multiple 2Fa’s for.
While Yubico does recommend having two keys as I mentioned certain services only let you setup 2Fa once and not multiple times. However, Linux (and I want to assume Windows as well) let you setup as many 2Fa keys as you want, so both the Yubikey on my keychain and the one I leave at home both grant Root access to my desktop and server.
So I don’t have a USB C Yubikey ironically both my iPhone and iPad are USB C so I have the option to use a dongle or NFC, both have worked great, I have had a couple scares where the app will error and say “No response from key” but it seems that error is due to bad contact/connection. I’ve attached a few images of the iOS app to help get an idea of the layout.
I just realized, the formatting of my last reply got lost somehow, sorry for that. Nevertheless, thank you very much for your response. Really appreciate the insights of a long time user.
I switched from Authy to Aegis like 2 years ago, because I didn't want to rely on an online service either. Similar to something like Keepass, the database is local and you are in charge of making backups and such. But that is also the great thing about it. If your phone dies you just copy the backup to the new device and your golden. I already thought about the switch to a Yubikey back then, but didn't go through with it.
With regards to the backup key, Yubikey recommends to save (screenshot) the QR code that is generated during 2FA setup to setup the backup key later on. Maybe that is also a workaround for services that only allow a single 2FA device. https://support.yubico.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021919459-How-to-register-your-spare-key
Yes always plugged in works of course, I just meant that you are somewhat compromising the security that you have gained by using dedicated hardware. But as you said, if touch is enabled and the key is password protected you are probably fine. In the end this comes always down to an optimization problem between security and convenience that everyone has to decided for themself.
Just looking back at my purchase history, I got my Yubikey’s back in January 2020, it appears that I never read this doc about scanning the QR code for the backup key, or maybe I did? I don’t really remember it all too well. Regardless In certain circumstances my keys do the exact same thing and I’m quite sure I followed some guide to create one primary and one secondary key but it’s possible that guide has gone outdated.
I can totally respect the folks who opted to self host, I’m horrible when it comes to backing up data and such and self hosting wasn’t really my thing back in 2020 so it never really was on my radar.
Couldn’t agree with you more, everybody has that dial between convenience and security and should adjust accordingly.
Yeah maybe this guide wasn't there when you bought yours or it is outdated. Problem is, you have to setup the 2FA from scratch for these accounts if you don't have the QR code anymore. Might still be worth a try to really get two identical keys.
Aegis is still an app on your phone. It just is not connected to an online service so you control the database file youself. It of course always depends on you setup e.g. if you have a single device that acts as your 2FA "key" and keep offline backups of the database you don't have to host anything. If you want to authenticate with multiple devices and add new accounts often some form of automatic sync might be helpful. Even though I like the app, I don't want to convince you of Aegis. I just didn't want to paint the wrong picture.
We use yubikeys at work, far better then an OTP. Also I have 2 for home use, the only issue is I need to put 1 on some keys I carry as I sometimes need 1 and don't have it.