Vertically mounted 2U server

At the past two DebConfs Thomas Goirand of infomaniak has run a workshop on using a Yubikey, and been generous enough to provide a number of devices for Debian folk. Last year I was fortunate enough to get hold of one of the devices on offer.

My primary use for the device is to hold my PGP key. Generally my OpenPGP hardware token of choice is the Gnuk, which features a completely Free software stack and an open hardware design, but the commonly available devices suffer from being a bit more fragile than I’d like to regularly carry around with me. The Yubikey has a much more robust design, being a slim plastic encapsulated device. I finally set it up properly with my PGP key last November, and while I haven’t attached it to my keyring I’ve been carrying it with me regularly.

Firstly, it’s been perfectly fine from a physical robustness point of view. I don’t worry about it being in my pocket with keys or change, it gets thrown into my bag at the end of the day when I go home, it kicks around my desk and occasionally gets stuff dropped on it. I haven’t tried to break it deliberately and I’m not careless with it, but it’s not treated with kid gloves. And it’s still around nearly a year later. So that’s good.

Secondly, I find my initial expected use case (holding my PGP subkeys and using the auth subkey for SSH access) is the major use I have for the key. I occasionally use the signing subkey for doing Debian uploads, I rarely use the encryption subkey, but I use the auth subkey most days. I’ve also setup U2F for any site I use that supports it, but generally once I’m logged in there on trusted machines I don’t need to regularly re-use it. It’s nice to have though, and something the Gnuk doesn’t offer.

On the down side, I still want a device that requires a physical key press for any signing operation. My preferred use case is leaving the key plugged into the machine to handle SSH logins, but the U2F use case seems to be to insert the key only when needed, and then press the key. OpenPGP operation with the Yubikey doesn’t require a physical touch. I get round some of this by enabling the confirm option with gpg-agent, but I’d still be happier with something on the token itself. The Yubikey also doesn’t do ECC keys, but it does do 4096-bit RSA so it’s not terrible, just results in larger keys than ideal.

Overall I’m happy with the device, and grateful to Thomas and infomaniak for providing me with it, though I’m hopeful about a new version of the Gnuk with a more robust form factor/casing. (If you’re looking for discussion on how to setup the token with GPG subkeys then I recommend Thomas’ presentation from 2018, which covers all the steps required.)

Update: It’s been pointed out to me by several people that the Yubikey can be configured to require a touch for OpenPGP usage; either using ykman or yubitouch.