Maybe someone you know could take the yubikey device, attach a wire to it, then connect up a relay or something that could be controlled (using whatever interface you already have - I'm not that familiar with such medical devices) to activate the relay. When the switch contacts close, the other side of the relay could be connected to an earth-grounded point. That should activate the yubikey (I believe).

Note that the wire and relay and such will need to be shielded as well (to prevent stray capacitance - like somebody walking by or such - activating it). Coaxial cable like that used for oscilloscope leads would be great, and put the relay inside a metal box (and connect the shielding of the cable to the box).

Hmm - this is getting more complicated than I thought - but I think the basics are there. Here are some other links that might help as well:

http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/CapacitiveSensor (has a nice diagram/schematic of how these form a "circuit" for the microcontroller - this may or may not be what the yubikey uses)

A couple of PDF app notes from Texas Instruments on implementing capacitive sensing:

http://www.ti.com/lit/an/snoa952/snoa952.pdf

http://www.ti.com/lit/an/snoa926a/snoa926a.pdf

Good luck, and I hope this helps or leads somewhere for you!

I have an older Yubikey stashed somewhere - if I can unearth it, I'll do some tests. But I suspect it could be something as simple as a wire: on one end touching the computer's ground circuit, while at the other coiled up to make a flat spiral the size of the sensor, and having that touch the sensor. The wire could probably be isolated, because the sensor is based on capacitance, so it does not require a full circuit.

A simple way to get a ground connection to the computer is via a fake USB connector. Pin #4 is ground.

http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/usb-connector-pinout

Or perhaps the outer metal jacket of the USB connector would also get a ground connection.

With a Mac laptop, maybe it's enough to just touch the metallic case to get a ground connection.

TLDR: A wire, connected to computer's ground at one end, with a little metal pad (or flat coil) at the other. Bring the pad close enough to the sensor, and it should trigger.

Also, most implementations of security with yubikey-type devices I've seen use it as a secondary authentication mechanism and still require a password, so it wouldn't actually solve your original issue of hands-free access. :( There may be ways to configure it to be the sole means of authentication though.

Incredibly insecure vs the OTP/U2F modes, but probably better than telling people your password.

http://www.gkchain.com/gatekeeper.html

I haven't looked into the OTP functionality of it, since I decided to go with a YubiKey myself, but a friend loves it for hands-free automatic locking and unlocking of his computer as he comes and goes.

I can't remember the exact name of the product, but I installed it with good faith and it completely locked up my Mac so badly I had to reformat the computer.

So colour me a little reticent to try this, although if the gatekeeper guys are reading this I'll be happy to beta test one for you. You know, purely for accessibility reasons. :-)

2. walk to cafeteria with laptop that looks like any other. let owner watch unlock it for you.

3. profit!

4. optional, return laptop before lunch is over for full stealth.

I'm thinking of one in particular which I can't find at the moment, but I remember seeing a really fantastic video where one guy described in detail how he reverse engineered the mac thunderbolt interface and was able to flash malware bootcode on to it even when locked. Once that malware was installed, it could do pretty much anything, including get encryption keys to your hard drive, intercept all keystrokes, etc.

If anyone has a link to that, please post it here.

Also, there this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7123121

Not saying it's not a real vector, but it's hardly one that would keep me up at night.

Most people will just ignore it and call a fluke. Just like everyone does when their servers signatures changes. everyone just save the new key and type their passwords away ;)

Mmmhh, why not test this ...

... I have just tried this out. I used the wires from an old headphone and tied it to the trigger. I can Trigger the single click by pulling on the wire. I even managed to trigger the long click, but that was not very practical. I tried pulling it with my mouth, but since you don't need that much force, maybe connect to headphones or something would be enough. My laptop was constantly shifting about, but maybe if you have setup where the computer is fixed, that might be less of a problem.

You can configure the static password on Slot 1 (single click) and you can still use U2F if you like (You can even login with U2F and use Slot 1 for something else as well).

I don't know what your setup is, but that's the idea that jumped to my head. Sorry if it is stupid.

Yep, right there with you and agree and everything. Still, sucks balls to be disabled in this situation and I'm also fairly sure that Apple has the engineering talent to make this possible. One would hope, anyway!

This is a really hacky/bespoke idea, and I apologize if I'm being naive, but I wonder if you might be able to string a Yubikey Nano (https://www.yubico.com/product/yk4nano/) via a USB extension cable to someplace accessible to you around your head? Someplace you could trigger it with head motion?

You'd still have to figure out integrating the Nano with your login screen, your password manager, etc, but this seems like it might maybe be a viable first step.

But yes, that would be one solution and great minds think alike. :-)

As well, I just performed a test by rubbing my nose on my Nano, and it worked as intended :)

In fact how about this, you can have mine – for free. I never use it anymore, and if there's a chance it'll help you I'm happy to just send it your way. It's just collecting dust at this point anyway.

I assume they dropped it because it wasn't actually secure, I remember my brother getting past mine once with only a couple of tries.

Presumably we could do better today, but as far as biometrics go, I'd put my money on Windows Hello's facial recognition over voice showing up again. Apparently they've done a better job of it than the Android handsets a couple years ago managed.

I would absolutely love to use free and open source software for both my operating system and everything else, but only Apple provides an experience for people with profound disabilities that even comes close to the experience normal people have with their computers.

This reply might come across as snarky, but it isn't and I really have tried to find other operating systems that would allow me to do this. Not found any yet in a decade.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Accessibility

Fedora or Debian is probably the easiest way to get a GNOME desktop these days.

I mean I'm obviously going to try and change the state of accessibility and Linux by submitting bug reports and getting involved, but it's a long slow process and in the meantime I need a computer that works.

Really. Hard.

Narrator can run at the login screen too. https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/17173/windows-10-he...