In my previous post, I talked about the udev hack I had used with the YubiKey and how it was not the correct way to do things. I recieved a lot of feedback on this post, and here I’m hoping to summarise what the correct way to do it is. The rule I was originally using was: SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1050",ATTRS{idProduct}=="0111", OWNER="irl" The problem with this rule was that it always made my own username the owner of the YubiKey.
I was first interested in the idea of using a smartcard to store OpenPGP subkeys when I joined the Free Software Foundation Europe as a Fellow and recieved my FSFE Fellowship Card. By performing all cryptographic operations on the smartcard it would remove almost all the routes by which the secret key material could be compromised as the host operating system never has access to that secret material. I decided that this was something I wanted to try out and I purchased two Cherry G83-6644 keyboards.
The web used to be simple. It used to be a place where you could go and find reference materials, news and discussions about just about anything. All this content was wrapped up in HTML, maybe with some CSS to give it a tidier look, and served over HTTP. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. You can no longer survive on the web with cookies or JavaScript disabled as websites have been designed expecting that people will have those features available in their browser.