Card reader software for mac mac os x#
Card reader software for mac code#
Card reader software for mac password#

Two-factor authentication is achieved by having to punch in a PIN code when my certs are presented to the remote system. When I’m trying to physically enter a building the PIV card is my secure photo ID badge (with backup biometrics and fingerprints stored o it) - when I try to enter a US Government network “virtually” the same PIV card doubles as VPN access device because it contains a personal set of crypto keys that uniquely identify me. The way I connect is via a federal standard PIV Card which is a very cool physical badge that doubles as a holder of biometric and personal crypto certificate information. I do some subcontracting work for a few US Government agencies, one of which requires me to be able to connect remotely to US.GOV networks and infrastructure. This was not something I needed to do on OS X 10.7 or 10.7 with the open source smart card software stack.

Card reader software for mac password#

It did, however work fast and got me successfully logged onto the remote VPN server.Ĭurrent status: Thursby PKard software works well on Yosemite for VPN access but the Windows desktop I get sent to via a Citrix client reports “no valid certificates” and I’m forced to use my standard user login name and password to complete the final authentication. I expect the state of open source smart card and tokend implementations to get better and more easily usable on Yosemite so I may only be using the Thursday product for a short time. This will change but if you are in a hurry (as I was) the best thing you can do in the short term is pay $29.95 for the Thursby PKard software from - it installed seamlessly and allowed me to login via VPN although for some reason my certificates were not passed on to the Windows remote desktop system, hopefully I don’t need the $179 “ADmitMac” product for that. As of the time I wrote this article, the state of freely available open source software for PIV smart card support on Yosemite is pretty lacking. I need to use a HHS PIV card to remotely access computer systems from a brand new Macbook air running OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

Still – consider the Centrify software if you don’t want to spend $29. Still no idea why this is happening – on other versions of OS X my smart card credentials transparently passed onto the OS. Long story short: It works to get past the VPN gateway but throws the same “no valid certificates found” error when trying to login to the Windows desktop via a Citrix Receiver client.

I just had a chance to test the new Yosemite 10.10 compatible free SmartCard utility from Centrfy mentioned here: The bulk of this post concerns the $29 Pkard product from Thursby which is the first I found with explicit OS X 10.10 support. If this is bothering or interesting you, you may want to monitor this URL: There is an active Citrix support thread on the “no valid certificates found” issue. Note: This entire post is basically google search bait designed to (hopefully) allow others struggling with the same issues to save a bit of time.

Card reader software for mac mac os x#

Using PIV smart cards for HHS VPN login with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite