Live data from Hacker News

CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

ninjalab.io

31–40 of 80 posts

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#31
post #26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of telling you something you already know: you can use the TOTP mode on the Yubikey, if you’re looking to use it for AWS secrets despite AWS’s lack of support for U2F for CLI workflows. That at least keeps more of your MFA key material on the hardware token and off of your phone / other shared devices. The easiest way to do that is via the ykman CLI or Yubico Authenticator application (TOTP secrets stored on…

I've been meaning to buy a Yubikey. What is the best practice for using a security key? Is there a mechanism for backing my keys up somewhere safe so that a loss of key doesn't mean a loss of my accounts?

The main idea with a security token is that you can not get the keys out of them.[ß]

So for a truly secure and reliable setup, get three. Enroll them all as parallel 2FA tokens. Keep one with you, one in a relatively easily accessible but non-obvious place, and one in a safe or bank deposit box. That way when the one you have with you breaks or you lose it, promote the secondary to your primary and order a new one to replace the promoted one.

The third is your emergency backup, for when both normally needed keys are destroyed or lost.

Now of course, this only works when the accounts you want to secure allow to enroll more than one FIDO2 token. Which is, sadly, not the most common setup still. For instance AWS only allows to enroll one 2FA token per account.

ß: Some functionality modes allow to extract private keys by design.

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#32
post #26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of telling you something you already know: you can use the TOTP mode on the Yubikey, if you’re looking to use it for AWS secrets despite AWS’s lack of support for U2F for CLI workflows. That at least keeps more of your MFA key material on the hardware token and off of your phone / other shared devices. The easiest way to do that is via the ykman CLI or Yubico Authenticator application (TOTP secrets stored on…

I've been meaning to buy a Yubikey. What is the best practice for using a security key? Is there a mechanism for backing my keys up somewhere safe so that a loss of key doesn't mean a loss of my accounts?

Buy 2. Put one in offsite location (e.g. your notary). I don't have a notary; I got one always in my pocket, and the other one at home in a safe (pickable though). YMMV.

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#35
1. Can people pleas stop using light gray text, low contrast text is a major accessibility issue.

Besides that while it does sound bad and probably is bad for some companies using this chips for high security (e.g. Google itself) for many users it lukily will most likely never matter.

Now I'm wondering if my Yubikey is affected? While they list the Yubikey Neo the Yubikey 5* products are not listed.

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#36

List of products affected mentions "Yubico Yubikey Neo" as vulnerable too

It probably shares the secure element (hardware).

But that doesn't mean that the new Yubikeys (Series 5) are not affected. Just that they are not know to be affected.

I hope Yubico will make a follow up post about weather or not other Yubikeys are affected too.

But then given what is needed to use this exploit, it probably doesn't matter for many people.

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#37

1. Can people pleas stop using light gray text, low contrast text is a major accessibility issue. Besides that while it does sound bad and probably is bad for some companies using this chips for high security (e.g. Google itself) for many users it lukily will most likely never matter. Now I'm wondering if my Yubikey is affected? While they list the Yubikey Neo the Yubikey 5* products are not listed.

Unlike the Neo, the Yubikey 5 uses a chip from Infineon: http://www.hexview.com/~scl/neo5/.

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#38
post #31
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been meaning to buy a Yubikey. What is the best practice for using a security key? Is there a mechanism for backing my keys up somewhere safe so that a loss of key doesn't mean a loss of my accounts?

The main idea with a security token is that you can not get the keys out of them.[ß] So for a truly secure and reliable setup, get three. Enroll them all as parallel 2FA tokens. Keep one with you, one in a relatively easily accessible but non-obvious place, and one in a safe or bank deposit box. That way when the one you have with you breaks or you lose it, promote the secondary to your primary and order a new one to…

I keep one always plugged into my computer (like a Nano model), and one on my keychain. You don't usually need more than that as there are ideally other ways to recover your account (printed recovery keys etc).

If your laptop gets stolen with key inserted, and you didn't have time to invalidate the key, one still has to access your local account, and find out saved login information in order to leverage that key, and that's until you notice that your computer's stolen and invalidated your key everywhere. Otherwise, it's just another random key for the thief.

I don't find that part of my threat model, and I've got my laptop stolen before with key plugged in.

Re: CVE-2021-3011: Key recovery on Google Titan Key

#39
post #26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of telling you something you already know: you can use the TOTP mode on the Yubikey, if you’re looking to use it for AWS secrets despite AWS’s lack of support for U2F for CLI workflows. That at least keeps more of your MFA key material on the hardware token and off of your phone / other shared devices. The easiest way to do that is via the ykman CLI or Yubico Authenticator application (TOTP secrets stored on…

I've been meaning to buy a Yubikey. What is the best practice for using a security key? Is there a mechanism for backing my keys up somewhere safe so that a loss of key doesn't mean a loss of my accounts?

Buy 3 keys, keep one with yourself, one at home and one in a distant relative's basement. Preferably the latter two in fireproof safes.
Post reply on HN