Yubico Forum

I'm having problems getting my brand new YubiKey NEO working with Yubico Authenticator on my Verizon Galaxy Note 3. I've not had issues with NFC with respect to anything else in the past. I mainly want to use my NEO for LastPass and a more secure replacement for Google Authenticator. It seems to be working just fine via NFC for LastPass and seems to work fine via USB on my PC for LastPass as well. With the Android Yubico Authenticator however, I'm getting errors (that seem to occur) whenever it tries to save anything.

Behavior I've noticed:

• Swiping my NEO when requested by Yubico Authenticator seems to work fine, it lets me into the app and tells me my credentials list is empty. I assume it's doing something with the NFC at that point.
• When I want to change my device password, it asks me to swipe and let's me in to change the password, but I get an error when swiping to save
• When I want to add a new set of credentials, I can scan the QR Code to add it but I get an error when swiping to save
• If I go back into the app later and swipe my NEO to see my list of credentials, it seems to read the NFC info successfully and tell me I have an empty credentials list.
• At one point I was able to get a credential to show in the Yubico Authenticator but it won't now and I can't recall exactly what, if anything I did to the configuration. I think I changed the "connection mode" from "OTP+CCID" to "OTP" and then back to "OTP+CCID".
• If I swipe the NEO's NFC when I have no apps open on my phone activates LastPass as I understand it should.

It's a bit unsettling to consider putting my credentials inside an app that requires an NFC swipe when it's showing so many errors in communication. I'm concerned I'm going to end up hosing myself by putting my credentials into Yubico Authenticator and then not being able to get to them. If I keep a backup in Google Authenticator (which I'm doing now) then I'm defeating the purpose of using the YubiKey NEO (for its NFC capability.)

Information below provided to hopefully give someone whatever they need to know all in one shot.

Here is some info about my particular YubiKey NEO from the command line in case it helps anyone:
Here are two examples of when the Yubico Authenticator asks me to swipe when it's trying to update and I get errors.


Here is what's show in YubiKey NEO Manager (0.2.2):

Here are the apps status:

My guess is that the NFC antenna in the phone isn't strong enough to reliably work with the NEO for the YubiOATH applet. There's a big difference in time and power required to authenticate against the YubiOATH applet and calculate codes for all the stored credentials, VS simply providing an OTP as part of an URL over NDEF. If you have a case on your phone, you could try removing that. There's also usually a "sweet spot" on the phone where you get the best NFC connectivity, which can be a bit tricky to find.

Just came across this post while looking for an answer to why my new Yubikey Neo was not working with my Galaxy S5. I took off the back cover, the original cover and not a case, and swiped my Neo. It opened Last Pass. My question is this, what good is the Yubikey if I have to disassemble my phone in order for it to work? And, I can enter my Last Pass Vault by simply entering my password with no Yubikey Neo needed so what is the point of the Key on the phone? If I have things configured incorrectly then please let me know. The screenshots above are similar to my settings.

The Yubico Authenticator has nothing to do with Lastpass. With the Yubico Authenticator app, the shared secrets for OTP generation are stored on the Yubikey itself. As for the NFC reception, make sure you're swiping the Neo directly over the NFC antenna, which I believe is embedded within the OEM battery in the S5.