Nitrokey is an open source usb smart card that has multiple uses including one time passwords, email encryption, file encryption and computer authentication. The creators decided to create it when they needed a solution to securing their encryption keys on insecure computer systems. In 2009 they released their first product and now in 2016 they have four different products and are on their way to creating another one. I found Nitrokey when I was looking to get another Yubikey and found out that Yubikey went closed source. Since then I have been testing the Nitrokey out, I’ve found that I like it a lot and will definitely be using the them in the future. So far it has been a bit of a challenge to configure as the GUI is far from perfect, mainly in the aspect that its hard to figure out if you are a newcomer. But I haven’t given up and have been able to use the majority of the features that the Nitrokey Pro has (which is a pretty long list). And eventually I got the hang of it, and realized how very simple issues were proving to be more challenging then they should have been.

GPG

I found GPG to be the easiest to of the Nitrokey abilities. The simplest way to begin is to use the GPA Assistant. The GPA Assistant lets you edit the user data on the card and easily/quickly generate encryption keys for the smart card. The other option is to use the terminal which is not that much harder to learn. The one problem that really stumped me was getting everything to work on multiple computers, for example if I setup the Nitrokey on one pc GPG would not be able to decrypt/sign anything on another pc. I am hoping to resolve this issue in the future as it would greatly improve the functionality as it limits me to one computer (When I figure this out I will update the post). Besides this one little hitch the Nitrokey worked great, the hardest part was getting familiar with using GPG commands as I have always prefered using the GUI. You can use GPA with it but I found using the command line was preferable when setting up the Nitrokey.

Email Encryption

If you were able to get the Nitrokey working with GPG and all that, then using it for email encryption is only takes a few more steps. Assuming you are going to use Thunderbird, you just need to install the Enigmamail extension. Once you install the plugin you can encrypt and decrypt mail in the same way that you would encrypt/decrypt anything with your Nitrokey. Email encryption with Nitrokey is one of the easier functions of the Nitrokey to set up.

Encryption

This section was a simple challenge for me to set up. I ended up overlooking the setup process only to realize where I was going wrong. All you really need to do is download the PKCS#11 library that lets Veracrypt talk with Nitrokey. Once you do that you can add the Nitrokey as a keyfile and add an extra layer of security to your encrypted volumes.

Password Manager

This is the one function of the Nitrokey that I struggled to set up. I’ve setup Keepass with OTP before although I never ended up using it. If anyone knows how to set up Keepass with Nitrokey please comment or send me a message as I would love to set this up as it is one of the most important features of Nitrokey.

In the end

I definitely am a fan of the Nitrokey Pro, after getting through the challenging learning curve at least. Nitrokey has a pretty long list of features, there are more than what I mentioned in this post. The features that I listed in this post are the ones that I have tried and successfully set up. I’m going to give the other features a go when I get access to my other machine but I wanted to get this post out as I have had the Nitrokey for a while now (stuck on windows ultrabook currently). If you are not afraid of fairly advanced (but open source) but feature rich usb key then give Nitrokey a go. And even if you are not the most advanced user with a bit of problem solving its easy to set everything up, its just a bit harder. Overall I’m a fan of the Nitrokey Pro, its well designed (there are a few things I would like to see though) and has lots of features. Be sure to check the website in the future as I will be creating tutorials for the Nitrokey Pro (feel free to ask questions if you have any).