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Comment by meaty | Hacker News Reader

Used one of these before (YubiKey) - they are an utter pain in the arse.

The contacts get dirty, they dont fit some USB ports properly, they die regularly, are absolutely no good if you don't have a USB port handy (my desktop for example doesn't have a USB hole in the front or on the keyboard or monitor, resulting in crawling around under my desk to authenticate) and to be honest quite fragile.

All it does is act as a USB HID keyboard and pump some text down when you press the button on it. It's basically about as secure as an RSA key but requires physical electrical contact with the machine.

No thank you.

(For reference http://bigv.io/ uses these).

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FWIW, I've had one at work for a year now and I've had nearly none of the problems you've mentioned. It's fit into all USB ports I've tried, the contacts are still fine, it hasn't died, it doesn't seem fragile (or at least hasn't broken yet) and I haven't had to crawl anywhere to plug it in. The most annoying thing (apart from the general annoyance of a second authentication step) is that I can't use it via my phone; a screen on it would be handy for that.

I'm glad you've had success. You must look after yours better than our clients did!

Man, I've just got it on my keys and shove them in my pockets... I wonder what your clients were doing with the things...

They're in the financial services industry so they are the manifestation of the infinite monkeys theorem.

I have had great success with yubikey for over a year. Their combo with LastPass is excellent. It even works on my iPhone/iPad with the USB adapter. I highly recommend you buy some and try them out. I keep a NEO in my rMBP and others on my wife and my keychains for our multiple computers. LastPass allows you to link several yubikeys to one account for a great 2 factor auth secure password store.

>All it does is act as a USB HID keyboard and pump some text down when you press the button on it.

Not necessarily. They can be configured for challenge-response auth: http://www.yubico.com/products/services-software/personaliza...

I've got some hard to access USB ports, too. I solved that problem by buying some USB extension cables (male on one end, female on the other). They are very inexpensive. Give them a try, you won't be disappointed. No more uncomfortable hunting for USB ports under the desk!

If you don't like a cable that could slide back behind your desk, you could also use what they recommend for their YubiKey Nano -- a "USB docking ball": http://www.amazon.co.uk/Docking-Station-Desktop-Stand-Extens...

I really like the idea of the Yubikeys, but I had one fail on me after I touched it and experienced a static shock.

Another problem is they don't work if the OS is configured to an alternate keyboard layout. The default hex encoding assumed QWERTY, but I use Dvorak. Perhaps this has been remedied in newer models.

BigV uses these, but beyond the beta they're an optional extra not required.

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