chiachilo / pam_usb

Hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary USB Flash Drives.

pam_usb

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary USB Flash Drives.

It works with any application supporting PAM, such as su and login managers (GDM, KDM).

Features

• Password-less authentication. Use your USB stick for authentication, don't type passwords anymore.
• Device auto probing. You don't need to mount the device, or even to configure the device location (sda1, sdb1, etc). pam_usb.so will automatically locate the device using UDisks and access its data by itself.
• Two-factor authentication. Achieve greater security by requiring both the USB stick and the password to authenticate the user.
• Non-intrusive. pam_usb doesn't require any modifications of the USB storage device to work (no additional partitions required).
• USB Serial number, model and vendor verification.
• Support for One Time Pads authentication.
• You can use the same device accross multiple machines.
• Support for all kind of removable devices (SD, MMC, etc).

Tools

• pamusb-agent: trigger actions (such as locking the screen) upon device authentication and removal.
• pamusb-conf: configuration helper.
• pamusb-check: integrate pam_usb's authentication engine within your scripts or applications.

Getting Started

• Install pam_usb on your system
• Read the Getting Started Guide
• Have a look at the Configuration File Reference
• Problem? See the Troubleshooting Guide