Yubico is working on U2F security sticks with bluetooth

Yubico is working on YubiKey sticks based on bluetooth. The sticks combine the Universal 2nd Factor or U2F standard of the FIDO Alliance with bluetooth low energy, so that they can be used, for example, in combination with mobile devices.

Yubico reports that it has completed the interoperability tests for FIDO U2F BLE and that it now has a BLE certificate. In the near future, the company plans to release test versions of YubiKey BLE. YubiKeys now have to be inserted into a USB slot for authentication. They work on the basis of the FIDO U2F standard for two-factor authentication, which was ready in 2014 and received support for Bluetooth a year later. Yubico was one of the driving forces behind that specification.

With YubiKey BLE, the sticks can be held near a Bluetooth-enabled device for contactless authentication. There are still some hurdles to overcome and things to take into account, according to Yubico. For example, bluetooth has a range of up to thirty meters and the company emphasizes that with a security product you want to be sure that you are pairing with the right system.

In addition, YubiKey works with bluetooth le, but there are still many devices on the market that only support older versions of bluetooth. The company also points out that a battery is necessary for the sticks to work with bluetooth, which has implications for design, safety and regulations. According to Yubico, it is also complex to comply with the rules for the use of radio frequencies in many geographical areas.

FIDO, or Fast Identity Online, was founded in 2012 to create an open, interoperable and scalable set of mechanisms to replace passwords for online authentication. The standard works on the basis of public key cryptography in combination with authentication methods such as voice recognition, fingerprint, chip or facial recognition. Google, Dropbox and GitHub, among others, offer support for logging in with FIDO U2F.