Make sure you read down on this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21884184 there is a lot of misinformation in the top posts that are completely debunked if you read down. Like someone said OnlyKey is an Arduino which its not and that it doesn't have hardware security which it does. You can find full list of hardware security features here - https://docs.crp.to/security.html
I think the whole attestation thing is generally a terrible idea. It's not impossible to extract data from secure hardware, right now there is not a lot of incentive to do it because it's not going to get you much, spend a month of hardware research to get one user's key, no thanks. But with whole batches of devices having the same private attestation key stored on the device this incentives essentially ransom of security key vendors. I.e. Lets say I am a hacker that spends a month of hardware research finding a vulnerability and extracting the attestation private from a token. Its worth my time because I know this vendor has 100,000+ keys out there that uses this same attestation key. I then request that vendor send me $500,000 in bitcoin or I release the private publicly. The vendor pays the ransom because it's cheaper than recalling 100,000+ security keys. Another issue here is it's not if but when this happens, so when it does how do all of the web sites out there update to block the hacked keys? Lots of web sites never will. Time to rethink the attestation key being stored each token, that's a bad idea.
Yes software authenticators that use a security key for OTP are a good option. This is what Yubikey does with the Yubikey Authenticator. As with most security things there are tradeoffs to each approach. The pro of a software authenticator is that you can have an unlimited number of accounts, the con is that it requires the user to install an app on their phone/computer (in some cases the OTP shows up in a desktop app it may be possible for hacker to intercept). With the OTPs being generated and typed by the key itself the pro is that you don't have to install an app and login can be faster because the OTP is typed for you, no reading and typing it manually (also harder to phish). The con being you can't store unlimited accounts and since the key is typing the OTP the key has to be physically connected to a phone/computer.
There are tokens that support this. OnlyKey has a secure backup feature where you can have an encrypted backup file. If you lose your physical key you would just load the backup file onto a new key and all of your accounts are ready.
Allowing backups is as you mentioned a tradeoff of security vs usability. The greatest risk to your accounts is not always account compromise, it can be losing access to your own accounts. With OnlyKey you can choose to enable this feature or not. Backup requires user physical presence and restore requires the backup file and correct key/passphrase.
If you are looking for a solution that supports FIDO2 and also functions as a hardware password manager (lots of sites still don't even support security keys) check out OnlyKey - https://onlykey.io/
OnlyKey is also open source here are some of the features:
- On device PIN
- FIDO2 (15 Resident keys)
- TOTP (24 accounts)
- Static passwords (24 passwords up to 56 char long)
- OpenPGP
This is incorrect, a schematic only shows what electronics should contain. It doesn't provide any proof of what hardware actually contains. For that the best way to verify is to visually look at the hardware, we made OnlyKey hardware easy to verify with a clear transparent coating. When you look at OnlyKey you will see one Freescale K20 MCU, you can read the manufacturer number on it and know exactly what is in your key.
The microcontroller isn't the only thing that matters in your design. For example, since you're dependant on the ADC for seeding the RNG, it'd be nice to know what is connected to those pins, which a schematic would reveal. I can't tell that just by looking through your clear epoxy.
Even if I did drill holes in the casing and probe components, I have no way of knowing if what I'm seeing is expected or not without a schematic.
Definitely true, anyone who has ever seen proprietary crypto code knows this. Reviewing one file that is 7000 lines long is more straight forward than reviewing 7000 lines of code split in multiple files. It's open source and we will continue to make it better. If the biggest criticism here is the large file size, RNG complaint (top post is incorrect about analog read, they missed that we also use 6 touch buttons to seed RNG), and code style then it's a safe bet that OnlyKey source is better than most of the proprietary security keys out there. Of course it's not possible to know for sure as they are closed source, but you can look at past vulnerabilities. Like this one https://crocs.fi.muni.cz/public/papers/rsa_ccs17 it's not a theoretical RNG issue like the criticism here has been, it's an actual exploitable vulnerability that affected Yubikey and tons of smart cards. This exploit was on devices that were already FIPS and CC certified. Another thing to consider is the way the researchers found this was by statistically testing a bunch of keys, they didn't even review the source so you can imagine how many more security vulnerabilities they would find if they did.
Sorry to hear that you had issues with the LED. We did receive reports of some user's having issue with LEDs on some computers years back. With the latest OnlyKey hardware there have been no issues reported, you can check out the reviews on Amazon as if there is any issue at all there will usually be negative reviews on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/OnlyKey-Stealth-Black-Case-Communicat...
Just wondering, what additional security would you expect from open hardware vs. open software with transparently designed hardware? From a threat modeling perspective it seems that if the device is just using one chip onboard there are no clear security advantages of open hardware. Open hardware would only be provide a security benefit if you are planning to make your own security key, which most people won't be doing. And by being open hardware there is an additional threat model created where it is now easy for adversary to create identical clones of security key that can be used maliciously.
Ultimately, it's just a personal belief that all knowledge should be free as in freedom. SoloKey Hacker Edition in particular lets you run custom firmware, so you can at least be confident in the software side of things, and build upon it.
Open hardware has the benefit of being able to build it yourself, which is the only completely secure option. The downside is, indeed, the ability to easily create malicious clones, and the fact that you simply won't be able to build it yourself for any remotely modern hardware. So yeah, there's really no security benefit to it in terms of hardware.
Proprietary hardware has the upside of needing reverse-engineering to create a malicious clone / part, and the transparent design helps you make sure that they can't do a sloppy job at it.
It's a shame that tradeoffs have to be made once technology reaches a certain level of complexity, but alas.
