Known as the Solo, there a couple of different versions of the key, but all of them use open source software and hardware designs. So Patrick decided to take the next step and develop a fully realized set of security keys for the general marketplace. Patrick eventually sold out of his initial supply of the U2F Zero keys so he refined the design a little further and ordered more, which also sold well. The U2F protocol provides strong cryptographic foundation for 2FA and enables users to have one hardware key that can be used to authenticate to multiple different accounts and services.

He then set up shop of Amazon and began selling them as the U2F Zero tokens.Īs the name might suggest, the tokens supported the FIDO Alliance U2F protocol for two-factor authentication, the same protocol that commercial hardware keys such as Yubico’s YubiKey support.

After building some prototypes, Patrick ordered a large batch of the tokens from a third-party provider and then programmed them himself with the firmware. He designed and built a key using commodity components and his own custom firmware. The effort started as an educational project for Conor Patrick, a hardware engineer, who wanted to see if he could build an affordable security key from scratch. A small team of engineers is building a line of hardware security key that is completely open source and supports the new FIDO2 standard and can be used with mobile phones to provide strong two-factor authentication.

Yubikey open source alternative