U2F Zero Driver Coming To Linux 5.2 - USB Device For Two-Factor Authentication / HW RNG

While the U2F Zero has already been superseded by the "Solo" FIDO2 security key, this USB-based U2F token for two-factor authentication is finally seeing mainline support come Linux 5.2.

The U2F Zero is a USB-based open-source U2F token that can work with popular online platforms for two-factor authentication. A U2F Zero can be built for just a few dollars albeit requires a USB programmer/debug-adapter that costs around $35. Additionally, the U2F Zero has already been replaced by the open-source Solo Keys that offers FIDO2 protocol support for better security.

But if you are still interested in the U2F Zero or for other hardware RNG use-cases, with the Linux 5.2 kernel there is a driver for it coming to mainline. Andrej Shadura of Collabora has developed this hid-u2fzero driver that exposes its built-in LED and RNG functionality to the mainline kernel. This driver hooks into the Zero's custom commands for blinking the LED and reading data from the internal hardware random number generator. This does at least make the U2F Zero still useful for Linux systems in feeding the entropy pool.

The new driver at just under 400 lines of code is currently queued into the HID-next tree ahead of next month's Linux 5.2 merge window.