How to Get Around a Google Hardware Security Key Bug

Attempting to allow users to use Hardware Security Keys without enabling Passwordless (skipping passwords)

Teri Radichel
Cloud Security
Published in
6 min readMar 19, 2024

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I’ve written about a Google Hardware Security Key bug at the moment that is preventing me from using a hardware security key to log into my accounts without enabling passswordless. I also wrote about why I do not want to use the passwordless option — you can’t rotate your face. There’s also too much biometric information out there already getting stolen.

The number associated with a hardware security key is not the best kind of second factor. It’s short with a limited number of characters to guess in a brute force attack. Also, the number and the key are related rather than having two completely separate MFA factors.

So I want to use a hardware security key but when I logged into my accounts, even though I had set up a Yubikey on them, I was not getting the option to use my Yubikey as my second factor — I presume because Passwordless is not enabled…

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Teri Radichel
Teri Radichel

Written by Teri Radichel

CEO 2nd Sight Lab | Penetration Testing & Assessments | AWS Hero | Masters of Infosec & Software Engineering | GSE 240 etc | IANS | SANS Difference Makers Award