I got a couple of OTP (one time password) keys to try out. These are hardware dongles that generate a unique code number every time you use them, which you then use in addition to a password when you log in to places (eg your server, some website).
The goal is to make things more secure by not having a password someone can steal.
The mechanics of this used to be hard to describe but enough people use online banking with security tokens now (at least in western europe) that the idea is pretty widely known already. (You can read about two factor authentication on wikipedia)
First, I tried a yubikey. Yubikey comes with a silly tagline, "the key to the cloud", but don't let that put you off. The yubikey plugs into a USB port on your computer and when you press its single button, it types in the next code in sequence as if it was a USB keyboard. I've tried this on a linux box and and an OS X box and it had no problem on either.
Pressing a button seems much less hassle than typing in a code off an LCD screen, but it does come with downsides: you need to have the device in a USB slot when you press the button. On a tower desktop, that's possibly down by the floor. Even worse, maybe you don't have a USB slot at all, in which case the device is useless.
yubikey has a number of different modes, and can store two configurations at once (yes, even though it has just one button).
There's a yubikey proprietary mode which generates a long key string which contains a bunch of stuff (for example, a device ID); an HOTP mode which generates a 6 or 8 character code (with programmable extra decoration); and a static mode which types in a preprogrammed fixed 64 character string. This is all configured by some software that you get for free off the yubikey website. I'm always a bit wary of vendor software to support hardware devices, because it often seems a much lower priority than the hardware device itself. But this worked well enough.
I only tried out the HOTP mode, because I wanted interoperability with other OTP implementations.
The two configurations are accessed by holding down the button either for less than 2s or for more than 2s. I've only used the first configuration, and I haven't had any trouble with accidentally falling through to the second one. But it sounds a bit cracked out and if I was giving it to the kind of user who would hold the button extra long "just to be sure," then maybe there would be trouble. I was hoping there would be an option to switch that second configuration off, but I didn't see one.
My only interaction with the supplier, yubico, was to order the key online, for $30+VAT. This arrived 24h after I order it, by regular mail (from the next village over!).
The second device I got was an OTP C200 token from Gooze. This has a more traditional user interface with a 6 digit LCD display and a button which turns on/off the display. The C200 is a TOTP token: HOTP, except the code changes every 30 seconds instead of when you press the button.
Gooze also makes a C100 which is regular HOTP. I haven't tried one of these, but the design of the C200 case makes me think that the button would get pressed a bunch randomly if you're carrying this with your keys in your pocket. With TOTP, that's not a problem - the code is not related to the button press. But I've encountered loss-of-sync troubles with other hardware tokens before due to this and I don't think the C100 solves that problem.
There is no configuration of the device itself needed - it only does TOTP, and the seed value is preloaded. You get sent that by Gooze. This was sent by GPG encrypted mail so I could cut and paste it into the configuration of my server easily. It means Gooze knows your secret key (although they claim to delete them after sending). I'm not too fussed by that because I'm not aiming for über-high security, but I'm sure some people will.
Worse though was that through some mess up in customer service, it took them over a week to get the codes to me after the devices arrived, and they were pretty silent during that week despite repeated enquiries. I think this is due to the company being pretty small. This is almost enough to make me not order from them again.
Because the C200 has a screen, you have to read the code and type it into your computer by hand. So some properties are inverted from the yubikey: it's a hassle to type in the code; but it doesn't matter if you have a USB port. Because of that, I think this is more appropriate than the yubikey for "I'm going on holiday but want to be able to access my email from public terminals" uses.
I wired both of these up to pam_oath to log into my linux servers; maybe I'll write about that side of things another time. Neither device has beaten the other in being my favourite - the yubikey has substantially higher geek value for plugging into a USB port and greater convenience in some circumstances, but the C200 feels more practical for other use cases such as connecting from unfamilar devices. I've only had a few days to form the above opinions and I expect I'll form more opinions over time.