Using a Yubikey for account security

I got a Yubikey 4 half a year ago (during Red Hat Summit 2016), but until now I didn’t do much with it. Time to change that ;)

• Activate U2F on the services that support it¹
• Upload my GPG key into the Yubikey (my public key is (no longer) on keybase)
• Configure it as a second factor for SSH connections
• Configure it as a login token for my Linux machines.
• Configure it as a login token for my Windows machines (although I might wait for Windows Hello integration)
• Change my OTP generator from Google Authenticator to the Yubico Authenticator² (also purchased a Yubikey Neo with NFC support as a backup key)

If you have any more ideas on how to use the Yubikey, feel free to comment!

Also, If you’re not using 2 factor authentication yet, I urge you to start using it. It gives you a nice additional layer of account security, with limited hassle. It doesn’t even have to cost you any money, if you’re using a software solution. Checkout twofactorauth.org for a (non-comprehensive) list of sites that support it!

 

1. Internet Archive snapshot. Original URL: https://www.yubico.com/about/background/fido/  ↩︎

2. Internet Archive snapshot. Original URL: https://developers.yubico.com/yubioath-desktop/  ↩︎