Nitrokey 3

A while ago I bought a Nitrokey 3C NFC, and they just released version 1.4 of the firmware, which brings one important new feature.

Nitrokey

Nitrokey is the name of a German company but also of their main product. A Nitrokey is a hardware security token, usually in the form of a USB dongle.

Those keys usually implement different features for different usage like:

• FIDO/FIDO2 for multi-factor authentication or passwordless authentication;
• OpenPGP Smart Card for encryption and digital signature;
• …

Nitrokey 3

Version 3 is the latest one and comes in different flavors:

• a USB-C connector and NFC;
• a USB-A connector and NFC;
• a USB-A connector, no NFC, small size.

The main difference with the previous Nitrokeys is that the firmware is being completely rewritten in rust and is based on the Trussed framework (also used by Solokeys).

Like previous ones, it’s still open source and open hardware.

The main issue with re-writing everything, is that everything as to be rewritten 😉. Lots of functionalities available on previous Nitrokeys are not yet implemented on Nitrokey 3. But the recent 1.4 firmware added a long awaited functionality: OpenPGP card.

PGP can be used in a lot of different scenarios and is a critical piece of information that need to be stored safely, like in an OpenPGP card.

Next steps:

• Nitrokey 3: GPG keys generation (soon)