Quote from: Whothefuckisthis on June 03, 2012, 08:17 amWasn't sure if I post this here or rumor mill. But since it's about security I'll give it a shot. What is a yubikey (aside from being a USB )? What is it used for? And do I need one?Hi buddy, welcome to SR!I was chatting a few weeks ago with some more experienced users about the Yubikey. In theory a Yubikey is a USB key which contains a special private key which generates one time passwords. In plain English this means that theoretically you can log into websites like MtGox more securely as the key has you use an on screen keyboard to protect against key logging programs and generates complex passwords as and when they're needed.Take a look at https://www.yubico.com/personal-use to see other uses for the Yubikey.While on the face of it, it sounds very impressive it is in fact a bit of a liability for people like us. The simple reason is that having your private key stored on a device means it can be compromised and of course if you use it to protect your password manager program, compromising the one password would entail revealing the whole list!In addition if you were to use a Yubikey to encrypt your machine with Truecrypt through creating a static password (https://www.yubico.com/static-password), if the boys in blue ever raided your home they could use the key to decrypt your machine too.I think a Yubikey might be useful as a decoy if you were using plausible denial encryption i.e you used the Yubikey to protect the harmless data on your machine and surrendered it to the authorities if your home was raided and they threaten you with legal action to hand over your password. When all is said and done however if anyone else but you were to get their hands on your Yubikey this would seriously threaten your security so if you do get one I'd only use it to protect non essential info.V.