Google releases OpenSK, an open-source 2FA security key platform

While Google has done a lot for mobile security, a little known fact about the company is that they love to dabble with security keys. The Titan line of security keys has full integration with your Android or iOS smartphone and can be used to authenticate your login to your Google account. Google has now launched OpenSK, an open-source project that will allow developers to create and build their own 2FA security key.

OpenSK, written in Rust, is simple as it supports both the FIDO U2F and FIDO2 standards. It follows the legacy of other open-source projects such as Solo and Somu, another set of open-source security key platforms. Google’s hopes are that developers and security key manufacturers alike will benefit.

By opening up OpenSK as a research platform, our hope is that it will be used by researchers, security key manufacturers, and enthusiasts to help develop innovative features and accelerate security key adoption.

With this early release, developers will be able to flash OpenSK on a Nordic chip dongle. The Nordic chip dongle supports all of the major features of FIDO2, such as NFC, Bluetooth Low Energy, USB, and a dedicated hardware crypto core.

“We’re excited to collaborate with Google and the open source community on the new OpenSK research platform,” said Kjetil Holstad, Director of Product Management at Nordic Semiconductor. “We hope that our industry leading nRF52840’s native support for secure cryptographic acceleration combined with new features and testing in OpenSK will help the industry gain mainstream adoption of security keys.”

OpenSK is written in Rust and runs on TockOS for better isolation and cleaner OS abstractions. Rust has strong memory safety which can help protect against logical attacks, whilst TockOS offers a sandboxed architecture for better isolation of the security key applet, drivers, and kernel. If you’re interested, be sure to check out the link below.

Source: Google | Via: AndroidPolice