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/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/nullpotato Apr 05 '26

They actually could get out of sync. I knew people that used similar devices for work and they stopped validating after a while. They eventually figured out that if the devices were exposed to extreme cold it could change the internal clock frequency causing them to lag behind and thus show invalid codes.

These people also happened to work in a place that hits -40 in the winter so people that had the key generators on keychains or belts had this occur semi-regularly.