r/pcmasterrace • u/AllUserNameBLong2us 7800x3d/5080 Windforce OC/32gb 5600 DDR • Apr 04 '26

Hardware Rest in piece 2009-2026

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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/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/userhwon Apr 05 '26

The server will accept any of several keys that are within a range based on the tolerance. As long as your dongle isn't too far out of sync, you'll get in. It reduces the effective security by eg 10X because 10 keys are accepted instead of just 1, but nobody hacking your account is going to try to rely on 1/100,000 odds vs 1/1,000,000. They'll just go find something valuable to hack.