How to send a challenge to a YubiKey and receive a response code

Once a YubiKey's slot has been programmed with a challenge-response credential, you can send a challenge to that key and receive its response via a CalculateChallengeResponse instance. It is instantiated by calling the factory method of the same name on your OtpSession instance.

You can send three types of challenges to a YubiKey:

The challenge type must align with the type of credential that the YubiKey was programmed with, otherwise an exception will occur. To send an HMAC-SHA1 or TOTP challenge, the key must be programmed with an HMAC-SHA1 credential. To send a Yubico OTP challenge, the key must be programmed with a Yubico OTP credential.

For HMAC-SHA1 and TOTP challenge-response, the YubiKey will digest the challenge with the HMAC-SHA1 credential that it was programmed with. The resulting code can then be compared to the code produced by the validation server via the same hashing operation. For Yubico OTP challenge-response, the YubiKey will encrypt the challenge using its Yubico OTP credential, producing a Yubico OTP. This OTP can then be decrypted by the validation server with the credential's secret key.

Response code types

The response from a YubiKey can be received via one of three methods:

  1. GetCode(): returns a string object containing six to ten 32-bit integers. A 6-digit code will be returned by default unless a larger number is specified when calling this method (for example, GetCode(8)).
  2. GetDataBytes(): returns a byte array.
  3. GetDataInt(): returns a single 32-bit integer. For HOTP challenges, the integer returned will represent the same number as GetCode(10).

Any of these response methods can be used for HOTP and TOTP challenges. However, GetDataBytes() is the only compatible method for Yubico OTP challenges.

Touch

An important consideration when calculating a challenge-response code is that you must handle the possibility that the key was programmed to require the user to touch the YubiKey button in order to execute a challenge-response operation. Although your program doesn’t have to process the button-touch, you do need to alert the user to touch the button. This is handled by calling the UseTouchNotifier() method, which takes an Action delegate as a parameter.

When the YubiKey requires a touch, the SDK spawns your handler as a Task. There are two important considerations:

  1. Your handler executes on a different thread. This means that you should not try to access the YubiKey from that thread — the handler is strictly for alerting the user. If you have a GUI app, it must marshal itself to the proper thread.

  2. Your handler is executed asynchronously. The SDK does not wait for your handler to execute, and it doesn’t care when or if it completes.

Settings and quirks

Regardless of the challenge type, you must call UseYubiOtp() when sending a challenge with CalculateChallengeResponse() (more specifially, call UseYubiOtp(false) for HOTP and TOTP challenges or UseYubiOtp(true) for Yubico OTP challenges). There is no default setting; an exception will occur if you do not call UseYubiOtp().

For Yubico OTP challenge-response, the challenge must be 6 bytes long (YubicoOtpChallengeSize). For HOTP and TOTP challenge-response, the challenge must be 64 bytes long (MaxHmacChallengeSize) unless the YubiKey was previously configured with UseSmallChallenge().

Additionally, for TOTP challenges, you can set the time period that the response code is valid for via WithPeriod() (the default is 30 seconds). Calling this method with an HMAC-SHA1 or Yubico OTP challenge will still succeed, but it has no effect on the challenge sent to the YubiKey.

CalculateChallengeResponse() examples

Before running any of the code provided below, make sure you have already connected to a particular YubiKey on your host device via the YubiKeyDevice class.

To select the first available YubiKey connected to your host, use:

IEnumerable<IYubiKeyDevice> yubiKeyList = YubiKeyDevice.FindAll();

var yubiKey = yubiKeyList.First();

HMAC-SHA1 challenge-response example

In this example, we send an HOTP challenge (hmacChal) to the short press slot of the YubiKey with UseChallenge() and get the response as a string object containing eight 32-bit integers via GetCode().

In addition, we use UseTouchNotifier() to tell the user to touch the YubiKey through a message printed to the console. The YubiKey's short press slot must be configured with an HMAC-SHA1 credential for this operation to succeed.

using (OtpSession otp = new OtpSession(yubiKey))
{
  // The challenge, hmacChal, has been set elsewhere.
  string result = otp.CalculateChallengeResponse(Slot.ShortPress)
    .UseChallenge(hmacChal)
    .UseYubiOtp(false)
    .UseTouchNotifier(() => Console.WriteLine("Touch the key."))
    .GetCode(8);
}

Yubico OTP challenge-response example

In this example, we send a Yubico OTP challenge (yOtpChal) to the key with UseChallenge() and get the response as a byte array via GetDataBytes(). This byte array is then converted to a string of ModHex characters via ModHex.EncodeBytes().

The YubiKey's short press slot must be configured with a Yubico OTP credential for this operation to succeed.

using (OtpSession otp = new OtpSession(yubiKey))
{
  // The challenge, yOtpChal, has been set elsewhere.
  ReadOnlyMemory<byte> resp = otp.CalculateChallengeResponse(Slot.ShortPress)
    .UseChallenge(yOtpChal)
    .UseYubiOtp(true)
    .UseTouchNotifier(() => Console.WriteLine("Touch the key."))
    .GetDataBytes();
  string result = ModHex.EncodeBytes(resp.Span);
}

TOTP challenge-response example

In this final example, we send a time-based challenge to the long press slot of the key with UseTotp() and get the response from the YubiKey as a single 32-bit integer via GetDataInt().

The YubiKey's long press slot must be configured with an HMAC-SHA1 credential for this operation to succeed.

using (OtpSession otp = new OtpSession(yubiKey))
{
  int result = otp.CalculateChallengeResponse(Slot.LongPress)
    .UseTotp()
    .UseYubiOtp(false)
    .UseTouchNotifier(() => Console.WriteLine("Touch the key."))
    .GetDataInt();
}