/ Andreas | System administrator /

Being a big fan of the OpenID concept I’m quite happy that at least a few of the sites I like to visit are relying parties. Primarily I’m thinking of these sites:

• bitbucket
• linuxportalen
• Server Fault
• SourceForge

Where do you login using your OpenID?

One of the keys I carry around on my keyring is a YubiKey. This post really isn’t about the YubiKey itself, but more about me sharing a few insights I’ve gained on using the key.

• If you already run a WordPress blog you can easily turn it into an OpenID provider to be used with your YubiKey.  What you need is the OpenID plugin and the YubiKey plugin.
• If you decide to personalize your YubiKey I can very much recommend the DuckCorp YubikeyHelp, in addition to the official documentation.
• The new 2.x version of yubikey-val-server-php seems to prefer being part of a group of validation servers, being kept in sync with each other. Failing to figure out how to configure my standalone installation to disregard that synchronization I modified ykval-verify.php (see patch) not to perform those checks.
• The YubiKey WordPress plugin mentioned earlier is hardcoded into using the official Yubico validation server. Apart from  the validation URL, set in the function yubikey_verify_otp(), there is also the length of the key id. Just look for the numeric value 12 and you will find where the key id is being used.

No, this post is not meant to make sense on its own. You probably need to be at least somewhat familiar with the YubiKey as well as the services provided by Yubico.

I really like the concept of OpenID. From a technical point of view it’s a beautiful solution as it takes a creative approach on authentication while still relying on existing (and proven) technologies. Then there is the part about it having the potential of making my, and others, life easier. It would be awfully nice not having to use a separate login for every forum, wiki, etc I happen to visit now and then.

While there are lots of official support for the standard and plenty of OpenID providers available, the web sites where you can actually use your OpenID are still few. If you operate a web site which require visitors to login, please take a close look at OpenID. I would most definitely like to be able to use my OpenID more.

Myself I work on a project which, among other things, hopefully will enable OpenID login at the Swedish Ubuntu LoCo. In case you happen to be familiar with the language, you can read more about it in the thread OpenID, SSO, etc för ubuntu-se.org.

Yes, I would really appreciate it if you took a closer look at OpenID.