Yubico brings the YubiKey to the .NET ecosystem with its new desktop SDK

Yubico Team

Yubico Team

2 minute read

In continuation with our mission to bring strong authentication to the world, Yubico is excited to announce that integrating the YubiKey into your .NET application or workflow will now be easier than ever before. This is enabled with the introduction of the new YubiKey SDK for Desktop. With this Desktop SDK, you can now add support for the multi-protocol YubiKey directly into your application, supporting scenarios over both USB and near-field communication (NFC).

The first beta, released on Friday, supports the Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH), and Personal Identification and Verification (PIV) applications. A beta refresh will be made in July that will add support for the Yubico OTP application.

For organizations using the YubiKey as a PIV smart card, the Desktop SDK automates many tasks such as generating keypairs, loading certificates and more. Coupled with comprehensive documentation and sample code, we demonstrate how to use the SDK for end to end smart card management and provisioning.

No matter how your user interacts with the YubiKey, the developer experience is the same. With native NFC support, building tap and go scenarios for your one-time password based workflows becomes as easy as if it were USB.

Key features of the Desktop SDK

  • Support for macOS and Windows operating systems
  • NFC as a first-class citizen
  • Targets .NET Standard 2.0
  • Layered API: Use the application session APIs for quick application development, or instead use the low level commands for total control.

Later this summer, Yubico will release the Desktop SDK as an open source project on GitHub.

How to get started

As part of the YubiKey SDK for Desktop effort, Yubico is building its most comprehensive set of documentation yet. The documentation is also in Beta and will continue to be expanded and improved throughout the SDK’s release cycle. You can begin reading the documentation here.

The Desktop SDK is available today on NuGet.org under the Yubico organization. The package to reference is Yubico.YubiKey.

How to participate in the public beta and give feedback

We invite all existing Yubico Mobile SDK users and those curious to integrate hardware security into their desktop offerings to join our upcoming webinar on June 30th to learn how to integrate your desktop apps with Yubikeys. You can give us feedback at desktopsdkbeta@yubico.com.

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