Re:Yubikey with USB-C
by flavor8 on Thursday January 05, 2017 @02:54PM
(#13330745)
Doesn't this mean that Yubi has the potential to know what your private key is (since they have to bake it into firmware before selling you the device)?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Most key dongles or smartcards let you load your own key on the device in a write-only fashion, or use the inherent secure cryptographic operations from the device to generate a key (which could subsequently tested if it is random enough through examining the public key portion and multiple tests).
> use the inherent secure cryptographic operations from the device to generate a key (which could subsequently tested if it is random enough through examining the public key portion and multiple tests).
It's not really possible to verify randomness this way - particularly for a device that already has a decent chunk of storage and crypto operahtions. Suppose the "random" number generator is actually an AES keystream coming from a key controlled by the NSA - how would you tell?