Enable FIDO U2F Security Key / YubiKey in Mozilla Firefox

Recently Twitter announced that the users can now use a FIDO U2F security key for signing in to their Twitter account. If you use a security key, then all you have to do is plug-in this security to your computer and it will automatically sign-in you to your Twitter account. Since the security key must be present physically for a user to login to Twitter, it becomes impossible for anyone to hack into your Twitter account even if they know your password.

But if you try to setup YubiKey (a popular FIDO U2F security key) for Twitter using the Firefox browser, then you will see a message the “your browser does not support security keys”. This is because the Firefox browser has the FIDO U2F support disabled by default.  You must enable it in the following manner before using any security keys in Firefox:

  1. Launch Firefox browser and enter about:config in the address bar.Enable FIDO U2F YubiKey in Firefox
  2. You will see a warning message. You can click on the I accept the risk! button to continue.
  3. In the search box of the advanced settings, type u2f to find the setting we need.
  4. Double-click on the setting security.webauth.u2f to toggle its value to true.Enable FIDO U2F YubiKey in Firefox

Now your Firefox web browser is all ready for using the security keys. You can configure the security keys like YubiKey to work with not only Twitter but other online services like Google, Facebook, Dropbox, GitHub, SalesForce and many others.

Another benefit of using the security key is that these keys work only with the configured website or apps. If you click on a phishing link that looks just like the original website, the security key just won’t work preventing you from become the fresh victim of a possible phishing attack. These keys can be used in all kinds of devices like the desktop computers, notebooks, and mobile devices like tablets or mobile phones.

One comment

  1. I have not been able to use Yubikey with Google login either on MacOS or Windows using Firefox. Yubikey for Google login only works on Chrome.

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