Yubico Enhances Security with Time-Sequenced Login

Sunnyvale, CA, November 01, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Yubico today introduced time-sequenced verification of YubiKey One-Time Passwords (OTPs). The new concept extends the current event-based OTP model with a time delta and sequenced operation, thereby giving OTPs a limited lifetime. Opposite of traditional authentication tokens, the automated operation and high-speed timer provided by Yubico’s Yubikey allows for a precise monitoring of elapsed time between subsequent OTPs.

Still relying on the original battery-less YubiKey one-way OTP generation model, a challenge-response like functionality can be achieved without any client software, additional implementation or deployment complexity.

This optional feature strengthens security and thwarts potential “Phishing” attacks by verifying the elapsed time between a sequence of generated OTPs. As an attacker cannot foresee the timing in which context an OTP or series of OTPs are to be used, the new feature effectively makes these types of attacks considerably less practical to conduct.

An illustrative example is a bank customer who first logs onto the portal page with the YubiKey. During the session, the user is required to generate one or more OTPs. The precise elapsed time between the received OTPs is then compared with the timer information embedded in the OTPs. If there are discrepancies, the requests are rejected.

The new concept has been visualized by Yubico with a number of different demonstration pages. Depending on the needs, different features can be combined to achieve the optimal functionality and security for a particular application.

About Yubico
Yubico is an authentication innovation company that helps the world to trust the net. In business since 2007, with over 2,500 customers in 60 countries, the Yubico technology is being rapidly adopted by enterprises and online services around the world. The team is based in California, Sweden, UK and India.

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