Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Identity & Access

Yubico Replacing YubiKey FIPS Devices Due to Security Issue

Yubico is in the process of replacing YubiKey FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) security keys following the discovery of a potentially serious cryptography-related issue that can cause RSA keys and ECDSA signatures generated on these devices to have reduced strength.

Yubico is in the process of replacing YubiKey FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) security keys following the discovery of a potentially serious cryptography-related issue that can cause RSA keys and ECDSA signatures generated on these devices to have reduced strength.

In a security advisory published on Thursday, the company informed customers that the issue impacts YubiKey FIPS series devices running versions 4.4.2 and 4.4.4 of the firmware (version 4.4.3 does not exist), including Nano FIPS, C FIPS and C Nano FIPS devices. No other Yubico products appear to be impacted.

YubiKey FIPS series impacted by crypto flaw

“[Random] values leveraged in some YubiKey FIPS applications contain reduced randomness for the first operations performed after YubiKey FIPS power-up. The buffer holding random values contains some predictable content left over from the FIPS power-up self-tests which could affect cryptographic operations which require random data until the predictable content is exhausted,” Yubico said in its advisory.

“This issue occurs only during the power-up of the YubiKey FIPS Series, version 4.4.2 or 4.4.4. After the predictable content in the random buffer is consumed, the buffer will be filled with the intended full random number generator output, and all subsequent use of randomness will not be affected,” it added.

The issue impacts PIV smart card applications, Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) authentication, OATH one-time passwords, and OpenPGP.

The flaw was discovered internally by Yubico in mid-March and it was patched with the release of firmware version 4.4.5, which received FIPS certification on April 30. The vendor says it’s not aware of any incidents exploiting this weakness.

Yubico has actively reached out to customers to inform them of the free device replacement and says a majority of the affected security keys have already been replaced or are in the process of being replaced. Users who have not heard from the company have been advised to visit a replacement portal set up for this purpose.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

The news comes just weeks after Google announced that it was replacing its T1 and T2 Titan Security Key dongles due to a misconfiguration in the Bluetooth pairing protocols.

Related: Support for FIDO2 Passwordless Authentication Added to Android

Related: Android’s Security Key Now Works with iOS Devices

Related: New Authentication Standard Coming to Major Web Browsers

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join security experts as they discuss ZTNA’s untapped potential to both reduce cyber risk and empower the business.

Register

Join Microsoft and Finite State for a webinar that will introduce a new strategy for securing the software supply chain.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

CISO Conversations

Joanna Burkey, CISO at HP, and Kevin Cross, CISO at Dell, discuss how the role of a CISO is different for a multinational corporation...

CISO Conversations

In this issue of CISO Conversations we talk to two CISOs about solving the CISO/CIO conflict by combining the roles under one person.

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...