Christopher Hylarides

MacOS Yubikey ssh-agent Setup

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 18:12:54 -0400

Recently, I decided to give FIDO2-backed ssh keys a go for work and personal use. The theoretical benefits of keeping your private keys secure and irretrevable are pretty compelling in certain use cases.

Background on the Issues with Yubikeys and SSH on MacOS

With modern versions of OpenSSH (8.3+), you can use SSH keys stored in a modern Yubikey that supports FIDO2 (specifically FIDO 2.1 for credProtect, which early versions of Yubikey 5 did not support). This allows you to use the key in an attached Yubikey to authenticate to remote SSH servers, including Linux, GitHub and anything that supports ed25519-sk and ecdsa-sk keytypes (essentially ed25519 and ecdsa keys in a Yubikey or other hardware device). For their own reasons, Apple has the MacOS bundled versions of OpenSSH (including ssh-keygen and ssh-agent) built with support for this disabled (including as of November 2024 with MacOS Sequoia 15.1.1). We can get around this by installing the clients via Homebrew.

About

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 15:08:51 +0000

Christopher Hylarides is a DevOps Enginner located in Toronto, Canada. He works for [Street Contxt](Street Contxt) and in his spare time likes to cook and travel.

Digital Ocean FreeBSD status

Sun, 29 May 2016 12:52:40 -0400

I’ve setup this website on a FreeBSD droplet on Digital Ocean. I want to start off by saying that DO is a wicked cool service that is both relatively cheap, quick, and slick.

However, there’s currently a problem with their FreeBSD droplets. I’m getting some bad packet loss which is killing the performance of the service, which is why the website is taking so long to load. It’s a known issue that they’re working on but they can’t/won’t give me a timeframe. They’ve given me a free 3 month credit, so I’m going to wait it out for another month or so before switching to an Ubuntu image.

Blogging again!

Sun, 01 May 2016 16:06:12 -0400

Well it’s been years, but I’ve finally gotten around to blogging again. I’ve decided on Hugo as my blogging platform and I’m hosting it on a Digital Ocean FreeBSD droplet.

I’ve also backported a couple of posts from previous blogs that I’ve ran. Let’s see how this goes.

OpenBSD sudo

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:36:59 -0400

    $ sudo -s
    Password:
    Your mind just hasn't been the same since the electro-shock, has it?
    Password:
    stty: unknown mode: doofus
    Password:

:-D

Korean Differences

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:25:18 -0400

A list of differences I noticed between Korea and Canada that I noted while there on business.

Visiting the Korean Demilitarized Zone

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:30:24 -0400

On Sunday, Andrie and I took a trip out the the DMZ with North Korea. Unfortunately the JSA was closed that day, so we didn’t get to see any North Korean Soldiers up close.

It’s still a very weird place. Driving up to it the river Imjin straddles the highway. Since it flows from North Korea, they’ve fenced it off halfway to Seoul and there are armed guard towers every few hundred metres. Once you get to the outskirts of the DMZ you have to switch to a special tour bus. Photography going forward is extremely limited. I was only allowed to take pictures from specific approved areas. Driving to our first stop, you have to go through a checkpoint where South Korean soldiers come on and check all the passports of the tourists. After this the bus goes on a bridge and zig-zag around barriers.

Seoul

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:33:52 -0400

Well I’m currently blogging from South Korea!

Seoul is a pretty intense place, and we’ve only explored it in tiny amounts so far. After a brutal 18 hours in airports and planes we arrived in the early evening. I was surprised that my CDMA blackberry roams here (no data though). So I didn’t need to rent a handset. The airport was overall very efficient and we were out within 30 minutes after landing, which was a nice reminder on how horrible and inefficient most Canadian airprots are (as well as Canadian Border Control). A quick bus ride to our hotel and we ventured out to the small roads behind our hotel, where we found a local korean grill house. For those who don’t know, many korean restaurants actually bring the raw meats to you and they are cooked in front of you on a gas grill. The meats are marinated and absolutely delicious.

Via Rail Internet

Sun, 18 May 2008 17:19:04 -0400

I’m currently on a VIA train heading home. Since Angelo bought the wifi service for the day and then just went to sleep, he let me use it. It’s almost useable (AJAX tends barf on it). It’s uplink is via satellite.

     hylarides:~ hylaride$ ping www.google.ca
     PING www.l.google.com (64.233.161.104): 56 data bytes
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=0 ttl=240 time=1031.102 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=1 ttl=240 time=1131.279 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=2 ttl=240 time=4449.298 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=6 ttl=240 time=1692.930 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=3 ttl=240 time=4730.675 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=4 ttl=240 time=4203.077 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=5 ttl=240 time=4004.036 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=8 ttl=240 time=1236.735 ms
     64 bytes from 64.233.161.104: icmp_seq=10 ttl=240 time=1667.189 ms
     ^C
     --- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
     15 packets transmitted, 9 packets received, 40% packet loss
     round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1031.102/2682.925/4730.675/1513.236 ms

Dtrace

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:16:19 -0400

From Brendan Gregg: “seeksize.d prints the disk head seek distance by process. This can identify whether processes are accessing the disks in a “random” or “sequential” manner.”

:-O

Wiser

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:09:27 -0400

This past August passed the 3 year mark of a company I work for. The anniversary occurred while I was on a business trip to Europe, otherwise I would have gotten wasted with several coworkers (which seems to be a tradition among the people whom actually get things done there).

It’s hard to believe when I look back. The very rapid rise (though it seemed slow at the time) that I experienced can seem somewhat daunting. At 25 I’m already single handedly making more than the average household income in Canada. I rose from a measly monkey that called people when shit broke to a Jr. Systems Engineer in the span of 10 months and from there moved to a Senior role 6 months later. It took 8 months just to land a job at all after school. I went through dozens of interviews where people said “oh, we loved your enthusiasm and your knowledge, but we’re looking for somebody older and with more experience even though we thought you’d be wonderful for the job.” I then land a job and rapidly rise through the ranks. The laughable part is that it didn’t seem all that difficult to do. Maybe I’m just well suited to the logical (and spat of creativity) required to fulfill the role I’m in.

Malta and the Tribulations of Travelling.

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 16:58:07 -0400

I get to travel with my job. It is both a blessing and a curse that can take it’s toll on a man. The positives are obvious. I get a paid trip to wherever they send me. I can expense things like meals, cabs, etc. I usually squeeze time to take in some sights and wander around. Some of the places, like Curaçao, I’d never go to otherwise. This is really cool, as it’s something unique that I can talk to people about. However, the negatives also weigh in. It can get very lonely. After a few days, you start to feel down, wanting to spend time with people. Whenever I end up in London, there’s plenty of people who owe me beers and I have a grand social time. Most of the other sites I’m usually by myself in a data centre carrying out work on our systems. You get sick of eating out for every meal of every day. The schedules are killer. For days that I’m working, it’s usually 14+ hours. I miss my girlfriend. She misses me. I miss my cats, my friends, decent coffee, and on and on.

Stress

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:49:33 -0400

A few things:

-Work has been driving me mad the past few weeks. It seems I can’t catch a single break, even for lunch. If I leave, my cell phone rings off the hook. Everybody, just FUCK OFF.

-I’ll very soon get to learn the joys of a mortgage.

-I just found out that the “ist” group (gothamist, torontoist, etc) has a Parasist page. Why the fuck wasn’t I told about this sooner?

Curaçao

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:43:19 -0400

Well, I’m now working in Curaçao. The plane ride was pretty smooth, except having to run through the mess that is Miami International to make my connecting flight. I’d post pictures, but Microsoft sucks so much that it can’t get Windows to understand my camera’s RAW format and I wish I had my mac.

The hotel is a million times better than the last one I stayed at. Ocean view, awesome service, I arrive, somebody takes the car, offers me drinks while they get my room ready, take my bags behind my back and there they are in the room…

Bon Voyage

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 16:39:26 -0400

I’m heading to Curaçao…again! Work has been crazy, lately. There’s a big release coming up, which is why I’m heading away. The last time they swooped me out there I was stuck in a shitty ass hotel (I will never stay at another Howard Johnson again) that reeked, worked 16 hour days, and didn’t have any time to explore the island. The island is nice, but I wouldn’t want to live there. If it wasn’t so touristy, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but ah well. This time I’m staying at a decent hotel, so I may get to go swimming in the ocean this time!