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ae35unit: Yubikey Nano Annoyance - Fixed

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Original source (web.archive.org)
Tags: os-x security Mac macOS yubikey ubikey yubikey-nano accidental-triggering web.archive.org
Clipped on: 2017-05-17

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I encountered one seriously annoying problem with the Nano though - I kept brushing my hand up against it and randomly inserting a torrent of characters into whatever field I happened to have selected at the time :-/

The fix for this was pretty simple.  There are two slots on the Yubikey.  The main configuration is stored in slot 1, which is activated by a short touch like brushing your hand against it.  The second configuration in slot 2 is empty by default and activated by a 3-second touch.

The fix is to just swap configuration 1 into slot 2.  This leaves 1 empty, so brushing against it does nothing and slot 2 does what you want with a 3-second touch.  If you're using Windows you can just download their GUI to do this.  But if you're on a Mac it's not quite as easy ... I use MacPorts and found I could get the required utility by running:

% sudo port install ykpers

Once that was complete I just needed to run this to swap slots 1 and 2:

% ykpersonalize -x

And that's it!  Annoyance vanquished!

Posted by Jackson at 6:05 PM Image (Asset 2/5) alt=