nitrokey-rs

A libnitrokey wrapper for Rust providing access to Nitrokey devices.

Usage

For usage information, have a look at the API reference and at the examples in the examples directory. You can also have a look at the [nitrocli][] crate, a command-line interface for Nitrokey devices that uses this crate.

Compatibility

This crate provides access to all features of the [libnitrokey][] C API for both the Nitrokey Pro and the Nitrokey Storage: general configuration, one-time password generation, the password safe and the secure storage on the Nitrokey Storage.

The required libnitrokey version is built from source. The host system must provide libhidapi-libusb0 (Linux) or libhidapi (non-Linux) in the default library search path. Depending on your system, you might also have to install the Nitrokey udev rules.

If you want to use a precompiled version of libnitrokey, you can set the USE_SYSTEM_LIBNITROKEY environment variable during build. In this case, libnitrokey must be available in the library search path.

Unsupported Functions

The following functions provided by libnitrokey are deliberately not supported by nitrokey-rs:

NK_connect_with_ID, NK_list_devices_by_cpuID. These functions can be replaced by calls to NK_connect_with_path and NK_list_devices, which also have a cleaner API.
NK_enable_firmware_update_pro, NK_change_firmware_password_pro. These functions execute commands that are not yet supported by the Nitrokey Pro firmware.
NK_get_device_model. We know which model we connected to, so we can provide this information without calling libnitrokey.
NK_is_AES_supported. This function is no longer needed for Nitrokey devices with a recent firmware version.
NK_send_startup. Currently, this function is redundant to NK_get_time.
NK_set_unencrypted_volume_rorw_pin_type_user, NK_set_unencrypted_read_only, NK_set_unencrypted_read_write. These functions are only relevant for older firmware versions (pre-v0.51). As the Nitrokey Storage firmware can be updated easily, we do not support these outdated versions.
NK_totp_get_time, NK_status. These functions are deprecated.
NK_read_HOTP_slot. This function is only available for HOTP slots, not for TOTP. We will support it once both types are supported by libnitrokey.
All *_as_string functions that return string representations of data returned by other functions.

Tests

This crate has tests for different scenarios: Some tests require that no Nitrokey device is connected, others require a Nitrokey Storage or a Nitrokey Pro. We use the [nitrokey-test][] crate to select the test cases. You can just run cargo test to auto-detect connected Nitrokey devices and to run the appropriate tests. If you want to manually select the tests, set the NITROKEY_TEST_GROUP environment variable to nodev (no device connected), pro (Nitrokey Pro connected) or storage (Nitrokey Storage connected).

Note that the tests assume that the device’s passwords are the factory defaults (admin PIN 12345678, user PIN 123456, update password 12345678) and that an AES key has been built. Some tests will overwrite the data stored on the Nitrokey device or perform a factory reset. Never execute the tests if you don’t want to destroy all data on any connected Nitrokey device!

The test suite contains some test that take very long to execute, for example filling the SD card of a Nitrokey Storage with random data. These tests are ignored per default. Use cargo test -- --ignored to execute the tests.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Nitrokey UG for providing two Nitrokey devices to support the development of this crate. Thanks to Daniel Mueller for contributions to nitrokey-rs and for the nitrokey-test crate.

Minimum Supported Rust Version

This crate supports Rust 1.34.2 or later.

Contact

For bug reports, patches, feature requests or other messages, please send a mail to nitrokey-rs-dev@ireas.org.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. The documentation and configuration files contained in this repository are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. You can find a copy of the license texts in the LICENSES directory. libnitrokey is licensed under the LGPL-3.0.

nitrokey-rs complies with version 3.0 of the REUSE specification.