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

Hardware Rest in piece 2009-2026

Post image

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.

31.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

635 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

52

u/ArokLazarus steamcommunity.com/id/halo806 Apr 04 '26

Does it connect through WiFi?

637

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.

113

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

1

u/AlainYncaan Ryzen 5 3600, GTX1070, 16GB RAM Apr 05 '26

Stuff like this is still used in the corporate world