The PAM_USB Project

pam_usb provides hardware authentication for Linux using ordinary USB Flash Drives.
It works with any application supporting PAM, such as su, any login manager (GDM, KDM), etc. The pam_usb package contains:

• A PAM Module
  • Password-less authentication. Use your USB stick for authentication, don’t type passwords anymore.
  • Device auto probing.You don’t need to mount the device, or even to configure the device location (sda1, sdb1, etc). pam_usb.so will automatically locate the device using HAL and access its data by itself.
  • Two-factor authentication. Achieve greater security by requiring both the USB stick and the password to authenticate the user.
  • Non-intrusive. pam_usb doesn’t require any modifications of the USB storage device to work (no additional partitions required).
  • USB Serial number, model and vendor verification.
  • Support for One Time Pads authentication.
  • You can use the same device accross multiple machines.
  • Support for all kind of removable devices (SD, MMC, etc).
• Several tools
  • pamusb-agent: trigger actions (such as locking the screen) upon device authentication and removal.
  • pamusb-conf: configuration helper.
  • pamusb-check: integrate pam_usb’s authentication engine within your scripts or applications.

You can download the current stable release here: pam_usb-0.5.0.tar.gz

Registered users can edit the documentation. Please contribute to the pam_usb project by improving the documentation.

• Quickstart
• Configuration
• Upgrading instructions
• FAQ
• Manpages: pamusb-check(1), pamusb-agent(1), pamusb-conf(1)

• SourceForge Project Page
• Bug Tracker
• Mailing list
• Subversion
• Freshmeat entry