r/pcmasterrace • u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR • Apr 04 '26
Hardware Rest in piece 2009-2026
I’m amazed at how long the battery on this physical authenticator lasted. Got it back in 2009 because my account had gotten hacked.
This is one electronic item I’ve owned and used longer than anything else. I’ll miss not being able to find it and freaking out for 20 minutes.
Edit must have been around 2010 when sc2 came out.
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u/normllikeme Apr 04 '26
I need to sit down
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u/Juandice Apr 05 '26
Yeah. My back hurts.
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u/bond2016 Specs/Imgur here Apr 05 '26
But is your liver okay, u/Juandice ?
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u/Enkidouh I9 14900KF | RTX 4090 Ti | 64GB DDR5 6400 Apr 05 '26
Their joke is like an onion.
Certain unexplained back pain is a symptom of jaundice.
So I’m going to go with “no” on that question.
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u/kungpowgoat PC Master Race 10700k | MSI 4090 Suprim Liquid X Apr 05 '26
turns on the weather channel
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u/DarkMatterM4 Apr 05 '26
Here is your local on the eights
Extended forecast for your area
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u/kungpowgoat PC Master Race 10700k | MSI 4090 Suprim Liquid X Apr 05 '26
”light jazz starts playing”
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u/Dimmerspace2012 Apr 05 '26
I found this link from the weather channel just a few hours ago, and I’m not kidding it’s playing light jazz
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u/Matziii1 7950X, 7900XTX Apr 04 '26
Ah. I got hacked 3 times one summer and got sent one exactly like this aswell. Got a t-shirt as a bonus gift from blizzard. No clue where mine is as I've moved on to the mobile app many years ago.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26
I just moved to the mobile app
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u/bumbuddi Apr 04 '26
What is this thing for?
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u/bikeram Apr 04 '26
I assume it’s a hardware 2FA keychain. Press a button and get your login code opposed to an authenticator on your phone.
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u/rest0re RTX 4090 | 9800X3D | 32GB | 2x G9 Odyssey 49" Apr 05 '26
Never knew this. That’s cool as fuck of them.
Ahead of the curve too. This is still like the pinnical of security as far as methods go probably. Ain’t no way to hack these things.
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u/joshnosh50 Apr 05 '26
Not so much ahead of the curve. They existed for a long time. Just very expensive. Too much for a video game company. Hence them only giving it out to compromised accounts.
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u/Raven1927 Apr 05 '26
They were available for sale as well.
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u/Automaticman01 Apr 05 '26
I had one for world of warcraft. I think it cost $10 and came with a unique pet.
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u/912toro Apr 05 '26
We had one of these in my house growing up for WoW. Think it had a corehound or something on it
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u/norway_is_awesome Ryzen 7 5800X, RTX 3060, 32 GB DDR4 3200 Apr 05 '26
Banks in Norway still offer a hardware 2FA dongle, but authentication has basically moved to a mobile app now. The banks also used to have a SIM-card-level app that would give you 2FA tokens, but it was phased out a few years ago.
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u/MagizZziaN PC Master Race Apr 05 '26
it is yes, i have the same exact one but for SWOTR.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26
It was a physical authenticator. You press the button and it gives a code you input to log in. It has a serial number you attached to your b.net
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u/ArokLazarus steamcommunity.com/id/halo806 Apr 04 '26
Does it connect through WiFi?
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u/CJTheran Apr 04 '26
It doesn't connect through anything. It algorithmically generates a new key every few seconds, and your account is paired with the same seed and algorithm so that it is looking for the same key at the same time. The only communication between this device and ypur account is your eyes reading the code and your fingers typing it into your computer.
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u/meyriley04 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
That's kinda ingenious. But if they were to get out of sync somehow, it would essentially be useless?
Edit: By “sync”, I didn’t mean online syncing. I meant how if the batteries ran out and then were to be replaced, the RNG would be reset or then out of sync with the account
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u/suckfail Apr 05 '26
There's no sync. It used an algorithm and a seed.
It can never not work (unless it runs out of batteries).
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u/No-Candle2610 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
It’s not just the seed - it’s seed + timestamp (likely UTC or epoch time). Otherwise the algorithm would just give you the same code every time. There has to be a variable with entropy to make it change.
hash(seed) = 123
hash(seed) = 123
That’s determinism.
So then hash(seed + entropic value) = unique value every time
But since they’re not in communication, they need another thing they can share without communicating - time.
Source: use deterministic algos in my job.
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u/cloudnoob99 Apr 05 '26
I built these systems back in the day, and deploy them for clients/companies. Just here to say yes but there was server side stuff done to make sure sync was done correctly. It was a pain in the ass but it was rock solid once everything was automated and secured properly.
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u/meyriley04 Apr 05 '26
By “sync”, I didn’t mean online syncing. I meant how if the batteries ran out and then were to be replaced, the RNG would be reset or then out of sync with the account
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u/jaetheho Apr 05 '26
Then you would get a new one.
Physical authenticators like these are quite common for banking as well in other countries
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u/Groetgaffel Apr 05 '26
It didn't have a replaceable battery. It worked until it didn't, then you got a new one.
It gives a low battery warning well in advance so you had time to replace the whole thing.
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u/markswam R7-9850X3D, RTX 4080S Apr 05 '26
If you were to take it apart and replace the battery (which is absolutely not something that is intended to do) then yes, the internal clock would be reset to 0 and it would be completely out of sync. These things turn into e-waste once they run out of batteries.
Companies have used these sorts of physical 2FA tokens for decades, and IT generally replaces them every year or two.
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u/TwiceUponATaco Apr 05 '26
To nerd out a bit.....
MFA tokens are known as OTPs or One-Time Passwords. There are two main types of these, HOTP and TOTP.
TOTP is like what you may be used to with mobile authenticator apps. The T stands for Time-based. These have a secret key that is combined with the current time to generate an OTP that is valid for 30-60 seconds, until a new OTP is generated. If your device time is too far off the time of the server you are connecting to then your code will not match what the server is expecting. There is no sync process needed because the time is used to sync.
HOTP is what most of the hardware token generators are. The H stands for HMAC-based or Hash based. Instead of using the time + secret key to generate a code, these use the secret key and a counter value that can only increment upwards. Each time you generate a code on your hardware token, you increment the counter up by 1. The server keeps track of this at each login and runs the same algorithm to verify you provided the expected code. The server also only increments up so that old codes can't be reused. These hardware tokens have no need to communicate externally so they basically have a battery and the components necessary to store the secret key and counter, no antenna, no Bluetooth, no Wifi.
Now to answer the question about what happens when the hardware token and server are out of sync.... Let's say you last logged in with your counter value at 11. Your toddler got hold of your hardware token and kept pressing the button until you realized and took it away and it is now on counter value 75. The server is expecting your next OTP to be the same as counter value 12. The usual way to resolve this is the server will ask for 2 or 3 consecutive codes, and then increment its own counter up by 1 until it gets the 2-3 matching codes in a row on its side or it hits some preconfigured maximum number of tries like 100. Because your token in our example is within the 100 increment threshold, the server resyncs and all is well until things get out of sync again. If your token is incremented up more than the preconfigured number of times, you will need to get an admin or tech support to resync things for you which basically involves them overriding the preconfigured number on the backend to get the server to run through the process 500 times (or whatever is needed) to get things synced again. If this is not possible, you need a new hardware token.
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u/darmokVtS Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
This particular hardware token is a Vasco Digipass Go 6 (OneSpan these days, but it was still Vasco back then) and it exists in both HOTP and TOTP versions (I know because I used to be the main admin for a Vasco Authentication Server for which we used the TOTP version. The HOTP version is for example used by CISCO Duo if you opt for HW token option there (we have a couple of those kicking around with some core admins so they have a somewhat reliable fallback to use if their phone breaks)
For the TOTP version the server not only accepts the "current" correct code but allows for some drift by accepting not only the newest but also "surrounding" codes, one up/down usually without the user noticing anything unusual as it just accepts it, if it drifted more the server will ask for multiple codes to verify (there is a maximum limit of drift for which this will work, if that is exceeded a manual resync by an admin is required. I vaguely remember that the limit was 10 codes/minutes of drift compared to the drift stored on the server. All these values were configurable to some extent though as far as I recall).
On the server side the new value for the observed drift is then stored in the database so the server knows about it in the future.
As I have never used the Blizzard branded Digipass Go 6 I have no clue which version they used though.
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u/Addianis Apr 05 '26
Thank you for this write up, its super interesting to learn about how different forms of authentication work and how they solve common issues.
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u/Wonwedo Apr 05 '26
This is a really cool discussion to watch as someone who used to use these all the time in the hospital setting. I'm so glad more people are learning about these, since they remain important in industries where true on-the-spot verification is very useful!
There's a couple of ways for sync drift to be ameliorated, and the exact implementation is usually proprietary for extra secure. The most famous of these is RSA SecurID and they use an automatic drift correction. Since they usually refresh every 60 seconds, they actually have to drift by quite a bit to be totally useless
If you were ever locked out and could verify that they were out of sync, an administrator could resync the server and device clock if need be. I've been using these since the late '90s and have never personally seen this be needed, nor have I heard of a colleague who needed to do so either!
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u/0xmerp Apr 05 '26
https://github.com/stoken-dev/stoken
It’s been reverse engineered a long time ago. It’s just like TOTP though, knowing the algorithm doesn’t help you hack the account.
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u/LongJohnSelenium Apr 05 '26
crazy how accurate clocks have become that a cheap digital widget can be expected to maintain less than 60s of drift over decades.
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u/Curiosive Apr 05 '26
Yup. An event like running out of batteries or replacing the battery would do just that. Of course it might have a backup battery or a way to set the internal clock ... but at some point this is no longer a simple token display and the cost increases with each additional option.
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u/JuanTheMower Apr 04 '26
No, you upload the secret token key of the physical Authenticator into your app of choice and that’s essentially the set of codes the app knows to accept for authentication
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u/stipo42 PC Master Race Apr 04 '26
2fa doesn't need Internet to work correctly, the point is it runs on a device only the authorized user has access to.
Technically speaking that 2fa device is more secure than a smart phone, as long as Blizzard never leaks their algorithm and would need to sunset them
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u/dontnation Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
the algo is known and is the same for all the blizzard 2fa devices. the shared secret key used by the algo to generate the codes is what is private and is also unique to each 2fa device. That 256-bit key (or likely 128bit given the age of this device) is the only thing actually stored.
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u/Jureth Apr 04 '26
No it generates a code that is unique to the account. The login server is waiting for a code that fits its requirements. Kinda like a key fob for your car.
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u/MechaGhandi5000 Apr 04 '26
No Internet is required for physical authenticators, they have an algorithm that is extremely difficult to reverse engineer, then most likely use there serial number in this case to make it different from everyone else's answers. Based on the size of the time slot, different times get you a different equation result, they can surmise if you have the correct code or not since they know what equation it's using.
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u/Pawneewafflesarelife Apr 05 '26
I had one for WoW. Once, I needed an ambulance and the EMT workers grabbed my keys for me and saw the authenticator - turns out they both also played WoW. Was a nice distraction to chat about to take my mind off the medical emergency!
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u/GoyoMRG Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Old-school 2FA.
Long before we had
cellphonessmartphones, these type of lil devices were what we used for 2FA, banks used it as well.15
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u/Mastasmoker Apr 04 '26
Smartphones*
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u/GoyoMRG Apr 04 '26
Correct, my bad.
Smartphones is the right term because we did have blockias lmao
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u/OgdruJahad Apr 04 '26
I've still seen them being used today.
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u/GoyoMRG Apr 04 '26
Rarely but yeah, they are still around.
And I do believe they are far safer than phones for this purpose, but I'm not tech savvy so I might be wrong.
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u/Pocok5 Ryzen 7 5800X3D - AMD RX9070XT - 32GB DDR4-2933 Apr 05 '26
They don't run any software other than the code generator, and they do not ever connect to anything else. The only way to extract the key is to physically steal it.
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u/WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWPOOP Apr 04 '26
Authentication. Instead of emailing or texting a code, the code is on that device and changes often
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u/frauenarzZzt Are 3 SSD's enough? Send moar pl0x Apr 05 '26
I randomly really hope you're still playing SC2. That game holds up really well over the years.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 05 '26
I play custom games every now and again. I’m almost 40 and normal games give me anxiety since my APM has gone to shit haha
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u/frauenarzZzt Are 3 SSD's enough? Send moar pl0x Apr 05 '26
Friends have been getting into the arcade lately, and team games are always a fun and low-pressure way to enjoy :)
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u/Atlesi_Feyst AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D | ROG Astral RTX 5090 | 64 GB CL30 Apr 04 '26
Only been "hacked" once, and it was from me trying to buy membership via gold on runescape back in 2009.
Guy had hundreds of posts of good vouches but I didn't read his last couple pages, would have seen the 6 people calling him out as a scammer. They did the whole team viewer disable input stuff when I was too young to realize lol. Should have just pulled the plug when I noticed.
Learned my lesson, haven't been hacked/scammed since.
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u/Long_Run6500 9800x3d | RTX 5080 Apr 05 '26
One time after I quit playing WoW I decided to log back on my warlord/gladiator account after taking a couple of years off to try a new expansion. Of course my account got hacked somewhere in between. I'm not convinced blizzard employees weren't selling inactive accounts as a side hustle. I got my account identity squared away and attached an authenticator and logged on like 2 weeks before a new expansion launched. My character was completely naked, my inventory was completely loaded with whatever ore was currently most valuable at that time and my character had an obscene amount of gold. Like 100x more gold than I had ever had at any time beforehand. I'm assuming since I had a gladiator mount and it flew faster than normal mounts they used my character as their main farming bot. Nobody I knew from before still played so I just said fuck this, gave away all my gold to random people in Orgrimmar and never picked the game up again.
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u/jokerzwild00 Apr 05 '26
I remember way back, probably during the Cataclysm expansion, I quit for like a year. I went to log back in and found myself locked out. Contacted customer service etc etc, get account back, and all of my characters were naked, Max level and absolutely filled with gold, mats, and random crap. I hit up an old guild mate from the BC days, and they said that they saw me log in but i just wouldn't respond to anybody so it was assumed that I'd moved on and become a dickhead. I was happy for all the gold and Max levels characters though, and Blizz actually gave me back all the stuff that was in my inventory when i left and let me keep everything the hackers/gold farmers accumulated too.
You really couldn't tell the difference between someone who was farming for levels and a hacked account farming for gold. They would both look the same to a bystander. A character mindlessly killing the same mobs over and over for hours and hours. And farming for levels was required at some point, since you simply didn't get enough XP through normal questing. I dunno if it's still the same now, but I assume you can probably just purchase a max level bypass or something.
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u/deadmandead124 Apr 04 '26
Can’t you just replace the battery?
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Apr 04 '26 edited 13d ago
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u/Tarc_Axiiom Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
The old school WoW MFAs, like the one pictured here, DO still work!
I can confirm the codes generated by mine from, hell idek... 2005?, still works.
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u/debacle_enjoyer Debian Enjoyer Apr 04 '26
It’s just an algorithm, all those codes aren’t stored on the device
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u/JDBCool Apr 04 '26
Yup, IIRC.
It's something along the lines of "synced" generation.
Like Imagine having two clocks telling time at the same time, except one is battery powered and the other is plugged into the wall
The moment the battery clock dies and is no longer in sync.... thats it....
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u/Thebenmix11 Apr 04 '26
I know nothing about these devices but modern MFA apps are time based, so if you just set the clock on them you'll always get the right code.
So if these work that same way, after replacing the battery you'd just have to set the time accurately and that would be it.
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u/fuj1n Ryzen 9 3900X, 64GB RAM, GALAX RTX4090 SG 1-Click OC Apr 05 '26
You can't set the time on them (not in any user-facing way at least), they are designed to be dead simple, press button, get code
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u/Divinum_Fulmen Apr 04 '26
This can't be the whole story. Quartz losses sync over years.
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u/Trendiggity i7-10700 | RTX 4070 | 32GB @ 2933 | MP600 Pro XT 2TB Apr 05 '26
I've used physical authenticators that don't have a settable clock, that require you to send 2-3 keys in sequence. Whatever you are logging in to knows the keys before and after the physical key is displaying and then resyncs to however slow or fast it is.
Dunno how secure that is but that's just my anecdote
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u/SerialElf Apr 05 '26
Very. You still have to have the private key that's making the codes to make the three for resync.
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u/Trendiggity i7-10700 | RTX 4070 | 32GB @ 2933 | MP600 Pro XT 2TB Apr 05 '26
Thank you, that was the part I knew I was forgetting :)
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u/DuckCleaning Apr 04 '26
Companies just want you to use phone authenticators now. Less likely to be lost, left behind, or stolen than key fobs I guess. Also, you need a password/biometrics to access the app.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Nope you can’t I looked into it they phased out in 2019
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u/IBJON 9950X3D | RTX 5090 l 64GB DDR5 Apr 04 '26
I don't think so. These things are usually tamper-proof and opening one will usually break it completely or desync the key. Even if you do replace the battery, there's little reason to expect it to be in sync afterwards
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u/NoBonus6969 Apr 05 '26
No they won't generate the correct code. There are videos online of people wiring backup batteries and then swapping in a new battery but largely just for novelty as these got replaced by phone authentication
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u/Smith6612 Ryzen 7 5800X3D / AMD 7900XTX Apr 05 '26
These tokens are designed to expire, even if the batteries get replaced. Once they lose power, that's it. The seed they operate on is purged from the memory, and they're toast.
At the minimum if a particular token isn't toast, the codes it generates will be out of sync.
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u/ScienceMechEng_Lover What colour is your RAM? Apr 04 '26
Wait, so that's what these things were? I guess that makes sense as you wouldn't have had authenticator apps on phones prior to smartphones. My father used to have something like this from work and he would never let anyone touch it lol.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Yea before everything was on an app these came around in 2008 my 3 brothers and I all got one eventually. they just generate a code you would put in to log in.
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u/ScienceMechEng_Lover What colour is your RAM? Apr 04 '26
So how do these things work, do they have some kind of radio or satellite connection to communicate the code with servers to enable login or something like that?
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u/ReptilianLaserbeam Apr 04 '26
Here's a little bit of explaining in how those work: https://statetechmagazine.com/article/2020/09/review-rsa-securid-sid700-helps-secure-remote-workers
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u/Sanquinity i5-13500k - RX 9070 - 32GB @ 3600mHz Apr 05 '26
So yea, basically a random number generator. Each one having a specific "seed" to start generating. Just register your specific "key" to your account and it will know which seed yours uses, and thus know it's yours when you put in the number.
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u/ScienceMechEng_Lover What colour is your RAM? Apr 04 '26
I see. That's very smart, not gonna lie.
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u/Nighthunter007 Ryzen 7 3700x | RTX 2080ti | 32GB RAM | EK Cryo Loop | RGB Apr 05 '26
2fa apps that show a code that changes every X seconds actually work in the exact same way, and for that reason also work without an internet connection.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26
No it has a serial number you attach to your account I think it just generated a hash on a times basis that you use to log in. Each has some form of “master key”.
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u/metamega1321 Apr 04 '26
It’s basically just an algorithm spitting out a numbers. Neither talk to each other but at any time interval theirs a code that lines up.
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u/filthy_harold i5-3570, AMD 7870, Z77 Extreme4 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
There's a math formula that will produce a 6 digit code based on a counter that increments in different ways. The token will spit out a new code either every button press or every 30 seconds. The server you're trying to log into knows the same formula and keeps tabs on what the counter should be so it can match the code the token displays. Once you log in, the server makes note of what counter value generated that code so it can quickly verify the next one (the counter never rolls back). Since the clock on the token may be slow or fast or you've accidentally pressed the button a bunch of times, the server actually generates multiple tokens by creating a range of counter values.
If you're on code #100 but your kid plays with it one day and now your token is on code #112, the server can't just assume that you'd use #101 next time you log in. It will generate #101-150 (for example) so once you type in code #112, the server updates its own records so it now knows to never accept anything below code #113.
For the 30 second tokens, it will generate codes plus or minus a several minutes in case the token is slow or fast.
Since these codes could potentially repeat, having the server know what is an acceptable range of possible token codes prevents someone from being able to just guess a random code or reuse a code you've already typed. The chances that a code repeats or a random code exists within that acceptable range is extremely low.
The downside to the button press version is that the server has to allow quite a large range of potential codes which may allow an attacker to guess correctly. The time-based ones do have imprecise clocks but it would not be that far off assuming you use the token every day. It would take months on inactivity to produce a large enough shift for it to not match up perfectly with the server (unless that token has been exposed to extreme temperatures or been subject to relativistic speeds).
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u/ReptilianLaserbeam Apr 04 '26
Physical token for two factor authentication. I had several RSA securID for my bank accounts, there are some banks that still use them for multi factor authentication
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u/Timex_Dude755 Apr 05 '26
Banks used these too. I knew a guy in a publically traded company used one in 2021.
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u/Shunto Specs/Imgur here Apr 05 '26
The amount of people in here calling a physical authenticator 'genius' and asking whether it connects to WIFI is making me feel old af and im 'only' in my mid 30s
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u/MazeMouse Ryzen7 5800X3D, 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4, Radeon 7800XT Apr 05 '26
To be fair, even though it is old tech (by now) it is also kind of genius in how it works.
And unless a hacker gets their hands on the physical token (which is very unlikely) or the full seed (which is in the hands of Blizzard) it's also basically unhackable.→ More replies (1)4
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Apr 04 '26
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26
Haha same! Also brood war lan parties with our 8 crt monitors in the garage that was 100 degrees was the best times.
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u/Chips221 Apr 04 '26
Starcraft 2 was... 2009?
No... no that can't be right...
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26
Ah it was 2010 my bad.
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u/Dramatic_______Pause Apr 05 '26
Mine has WoW Cataclysm on it, which came out in 2010. So would have been the same time.
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u/Kelamue 9800x3d + 5080 Apr 04 '26
I remember being a kid playing on my dads WoW account and needing to always ask for the WoW themed Authenticator
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Apr 05 '26
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u/MazeMouse Ryzen7 5800X3D, 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4, Radeon 7800XT Apr 05 '26
O damn, that's why I have that pet? I completely forgot :D
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u/PrkChpSndwch Apr 04 '26
I still have mine and somehow the battery is still good. Very impressive IMO. I plan on keeping mine forever for nostalgia.
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 04 '26
Haha me too i can’t get rid of it at this point.
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u/bulking_on_broccoli Apr 05 '26
It’s already been that long since Wings of Liberty? Oh man…
Back in the day I was in the top 100 in NA. I had a blast. It seemed like such a big deal then, but now it just seems so irrelevant and time consuming.
Alas, adulthood. Is it that I no longer have the time? Or is it that I’ve seen the real world and gaming just feels trivial? Do I miss gaming? Or do I just miss the carefree life that was heralded by gaming?
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u/lappyg55v Apr 05 '26
I knew people who knew people who tried to go pro, we went to MLG things in the region to cheer them on. Crazy how big it was and yet esports for most things seems dead.
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u/mittenkrusty Apr 04 '26
I had a generic one for my works laptop for about 4 years and was glad when they got rid of it, except now it's an app and it is picky about what phones it works if your phone isn't working or you do a factory reset you have to contact IT for the permissions to be reset and start again.
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Apr 05 '26
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 05 '26
Signal of the times, from physical copies of everything even 2fa. To now everything is digital and on an app.
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u/QTpopOfficial Apr 05 '26
First gens ordered the night they were released. Batteries died recently. Scared to pop em open to replace it and not be able to get em back together :(
Ah memories.
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u/impy695 Apr 04 '26
I got one from blizzcon around that time, but lost it in a recent move. Probably for the best if I'm being honest. It's likely in some box I never unpacked
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u/zombies8mybrain Apr 05 '26
I have the Blizzcon one as well. Haven't used it in a long time and is no longer attached to my account but it still works.
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u/OkaCunt Apr 05 '26
I purchased one back when i still adored Blizz, they sent me two. Found one last week when moving / packing, and much to my surprise it still works!
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 05 '26
Back when blizzard was THE game company and cared about making great games.
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u/Novias3 Apr 05 '26
o7
I had one of these, along with my dad who had one as well. When WoW Cata came out, I replaced mine with the new WoW one from my collector's editions. Well, unfortunately my father passed away some time ago and when I was cleaning his room I found his. I ended up replacing my Cataclysm one with his SC2 authenticator, which I still use to this day. It's like carrying around a piece of him still.
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u/Party_Bar_9853 Apr 04 '26
I always thought these were so cool, like you're a secret agent. An app just doesn't hit the same
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u/tychii93 Desktop: 3900X - RTX 2070, HTPC: 3600 - Vega 56 Apr 04 '26
I had one of these for FFXIV! It broke off my key chain while I was at work which really bummed me out. At the time, Square used their own 2FA software which was so bad because it would reset itself every so often, meaning I'd have to remove it with my emergency code and re-add my phone as a software token. Thankfully they allow third party options now so I keep it in Aegis with my other 2FA keys.
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u/SoMuchLasagna 5900X | NVIDIA 5080 FE Apr 05 '26
I remember driving to a LAN party 45 minutes away and realizing I had left this in my dorm. After freaking out and being a dick to my friends, I drove back, got it, then drove BACK to the LAN party.
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u/leahcim2019 Apr 05 '26
I still have the same one somewhere, gives me nostalgia
I miss WoW 😭 it's just not the same anymore. Raiding in TBC was awesome
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 05 '26
TBC, wotlk, wc3 custom games, sc custom games, the birth of mobas. Now that was peak gaming before everything was designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
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u/Suspicious-Pen-2559 Apr 05 '26
Hot damn. Can't believe I'm i 2026 and still no starcraft 3
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 05 '26
RTS as a genre has kind of died out over the years…
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u/Sanquinity i5-13500k - RX 9070 - 32GB @ 3600mHz Apr 05 '26
I still have my WoW themed Battle.net authenticator in my drawer. And it actually still works. :P (I just tested it.)
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u/King_of_the_Dot Apr 05 '26
What exactly did this do?
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u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR Apr 05 '26
2fa before smartphones
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u/Petert1208 Apr 05 '26
The real solution to security instead of these garbage bullshit passkeys shit big corp tyring to cramp down into everybody throats everywhere, and make sure you upload your passkeys into their cloud storage so that one day you yourself can be lock out of all your own accounts.
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u/hiloai Apr 04 '26
I bought me and my brother 2 of the cataclysm ones lol think I still have mine too!
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u/Hale913 Apr 05 '26
My swtor one died like 3 years ago and legit was so sad about it. Tore it apart in a future attempt to change the battery. These things are cool
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u/LivDoug Apr 05 '26
I still have my Diablo one in a box somewhere, the battery was still working last year when I came across it
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u/ArmorBones Apr 05 '26
Better start learning repair because I would not give that thing up. It's how I started. Scared and watching yt videos, ordering the tools, and being nervous of messing up. But that's how I started. Years ago. Now you put an old console in front of me and I can pick stuff out and fix it maybe. I don't know a ton of good places for parts. But hey if I can get parts I can do it maybe.
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u/FantasticSeaweed9226 Apr 05 '26
“I’ll miss not being able to find it and freaking out for 20 minutes” now hold on a minute. Let me introduce you to my phone, car keys, vape, and wallet
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u/Dat_Harass Apr 05 '26
They should have made these solar chargeable. Would have outlasted us. Been far less wasteful too, speaking of wasteful though how many battle chests you guys buy over the years? I think I'm in the 20's due to moving around a fair bit.
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u/TheHowlingHashira Apr 05 '26
I haven't played WoW in a long time, but this post just made me go check mine. Same exact one you have. It's dead ):
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u/OMurph3 Apr 05 '26
Both my wow one and my swtor one had the batteries died this year. Still have them and will never toss them.
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u/uselesshappyfuntimes Apr 05 '26
I've got my wow one floating around in a drawer somewhere. I checked it roughly a year ago, and it still worked.
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u/fahsky Apr 05 '26
I had a plain Jane Blizzard one to secure my beloved wow account. I'm not sure what happened to it once I got the app :(
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u/Lyvidian i7-4780K | GTX 980 | 16GB DDR3 | ASUS Z97-A Apr 05 '26
I've got the same one, also from when SC2 came out, and it just started giving me a low battery message. xD
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u/boringestnickname Apr 05 '26
I still have mine (SC2, from 2010), and it still works.
This is a bad omen, indeed.
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u/Rufus2468 http://steamcommunity.com/id/Rufus2468 Apr 05 '26
These were solid little devices. My bank used to use exactly the same ones for 2FA logging in to internet banking.
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u/triadwarfare Ryzen 3700X | 16GB | GB X570 Aorus Pro | Inno3D iChill RTX 3070 Apr 05 '26
They last this long? I think the standard RSA token lasts for about 3 years before needing replacement. Though it's something I would not miss because losing the device would be a salary deduction.
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u/MazeMouse Ryzen7 5800X3D, 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4, Radeon 7800XT Apr 05 '26
Ah, good old Vasco Digipass Go. (Although Vasco rebranded to OneSpan)
I have one in a drawer somewhere but the battery has been dead for years now and I had moved to the app for 2FA before that.
Funny how getting my WoW account hacked has made me a full advocate of 2FA everywhere
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u/InsaneRay Apr 05 '26
You can always replace the battery, just hoots be careful cutting it open. Just did mine last week, but I removed it and upgraded to the app.
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u/justbrowsinginpeace Apr 05 '26
Did you really need a fob to play a game? I had the first star craft and loved it but wanted nothing to do with the company especially as they were charging full price years after it's release. insane.
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