Purism Announces The "Librem Key"

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 20 September 2018 at 11:10 AM EDT. 16 Comments
HARDWARE
Remember back in May when Purism partnered up with Nitrokey as they wanted to work on a USB-based PGP SmartCard? They have now announced the Librem Key as a result of that work.

They have just announced the Librem Key as what they say is "the first and only security key to offer tamper evident protection to laptop users."

The Librem Key is an OpenPGP smart card supporting up to 4096-bit RSA keys and 512-bit ECC keys. These keys are intended to be used as basic security token functions -- they will work with any laptop/PC but reportedly offer extra features when paired with Librem laptops or devices supporting the Heads security firmware.


They would like to extend the Librem Key to support unlocking disk encryption, screen (un)locking, detecting tampering during shipping, automatic login of users when the key is inserted, and other functionality. But for today it's intended to store GPG encryption/signing keys, GPG keys for SSH, and one-time-passwords for logins/websites or 2FA.

More details on the Librem Key via Puri.sm. The USB-based Librem Key is retailing for $59 USD.
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