Introducing the Yubikey Nano XL Rugged Edition
Introducing the Yubikey Nano XL Rugged edition
❗ This post is over six years old. It may no longer be up to date. Opinions may have changed.



On the left, the small Yubikey nano, next to the regular larger Yubikey


Last month my Yubikey broke. I had a second one as a backup so there were no
problems for me. This second yubikey is a Nano model, that means it is about
1 cm by 1 cm, the normal yubikey is 2 cm by 5. It fits inside the USB port and
is meant to be inserted in the computer all the time. Extracting it from the
port is hard as well, since it is so small. I use my yubikey on different
machines and don't like the idea of it being in a computer when I'm not there,
so I wanted to fix this. I did not fix it by buying a regular sized yubikey, but
I found a clever workaround, which I name the Yubikey nano XL Rugged. You'll
understand when you see the pictures.



Yubikey Nano Rugged XL

I carry my yubikey in my wallet, and the Yubikey nano had to be in the plastic
thing it came in, otherwise it would damage. It is not more than a USB plug, the
part that goes in the port, so small. The intended use is to keep it in your
computer all the time but that is not my use case. Since I was given this key a
long time ago I did not want to buy a new key, since this one functionally works
the same. After a month of daily insertion I saw marks on the Yubikey and I
suspect this device is not made for frequent insertion, and I also don't want it
to break soon. The other one lasted almost 7 years so I expect that timeframe
from this key as well.

Via my local cable dealer webshop I bought this USB 3 male to female adapter (non-referral link). I cannot for the life of me think of a usecase for this specific plug, until now, but I'm happy they sell it. Check your local (china) shop, I expect this is sold everywhere.

Here's my Yubikey Nano XL Rugged:



The two seperate parts:



Here is a comparison between the Nano XL Rugged and the regular Yubikey:



They are almost the same size wise, the XL Rugged is three times as thick
(height).

Disclaimer

This of course is not an official Yubikey product. I cobbled together an adapter
and a Yubikey Nano and thought of a nice name. You can buy a regular Yubikey,
which will probably be a better (at least less thick) choice.
Tags: backups
, blog
, hotp
, lastpass
, nano
, nitrokey
, password
, rugged
, security
, usb
, yubikey
