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Showing posts from March, 2014

Unlocking Android devices using an OTP via NFC

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Our last post showed how to use a contactless smart card to sign email on Android. While storing cryptographic keys used with PKI or PGP is one of the main use cases for smart cards, other usages are gaining popularity as well. Additionally, the traditional 'card' format has evolved and there are different devices that embed a secure element (basically, the smart card chip), and make its functionality available without requiring a bulky card reader. One popular and affordable device that embeds a secure element is the YubKey Neo from Yubico . In this post we'll show how you can use the YubiKey Neo to unlock your Android device over NFC. One-time passwords Before we discuss how the YubiKey NEO can be used to unlock an Android device, let's say a few words about OTPs. As the name implies, one-time passwords are passwords that are valid for a single login or transaction. OTPs can be generated based on an algorithm that derives each next password from the previous one