TOKEN2 started manufacturing and selling programmable hardware tokens back in 2015 and we have been constantly asked questions about iPhone support. So far, our burner apps were available only for Android and Windows, as Apple did not allow using the NFC protocol on their devices, even though the hardware supporting NFC was physically present.
The situation has improved a little bit with the release of iOS v13 when access to more features of coreNFC Developer API was introduced. Unfortunately, we discovered that it is not fully compatible with the NFC chips we are using. As there are little chances that Apple will make an effort to change this to adapt to our NFC chips, we had to do the opposite and develop a new, iOS13 compatible, NFC chip instead.
Our first iOS-compatible token (model reference: “C301-i”) is currently being beta-tested and will start selling in a couple of months. Pre-orders are available here.
All iPhones starting from iPhone 7 support NFC (iPhone 6 and 6S have the required hardware but Apple somehow botched the implementation so it’s not usable to third parties). None of the iPad models has the chip, nor do iPod touch devices.
The burner app for iPhones is ready and already published. In addition to burning the seeds, the app will also allow configuring advanced settings, such as the hash algorithm (sha-1 or sha-2), the time offset (30 seconds or 60 seconds), the display power-off time out (from 15 seconds to 120 seconds) and time synchronization.
TOKEN2 Multifactor authentication products and services (short name TOKEN2) is a multinational IT security company headquartered in Switzerland, providing various security solutions for multifactor authentication.
iOS 13 — coreNFC
The situation has improved a little bit with the release of iOS v13 when access to more features of coreNFC Developer API was introduced. Unfortunately, we discovered that it is not fully compatible with the NFC chips we are using. As there are little chances that Apple will make an effort to change this to adapt to our NFC chips, we had to do the opposite and develop a new, iOS13 compatible, NFC chip instead.
Token2 C301-i, the first iOS-compatible programmable TOTP token
Our first iOS-compatible token (model reference: “C301-i”) is currently being beta-tested and will start selling in a couple of months. Pre-orders are available here.
Compatibility
All iPhones starting from iPhone 7 support NFC (iPhone 6 and 6S have the required hardware but Apple somehow botched the implementation so it’s not usable to third parties). None of the iPad models has the chip, nor do iPod touch devices.While our burner app will most probably work on all devices mentioned above, we were only able to test on the following models so far: iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone 11.
NFC Burner for iOS
The burner app for iPhones is ready and already published. In addition to burning the seeds, the app will also allow configuring advanced settings, such as the hash algorithm (sha-1 or sha-2), the time offset (30 seconds or 60 seconds), the display power-off time out (from 15 seconds to 120 seconds) and time synchronization.
About TOKEN2
TOKEN2 Multifactor authentication products and services (short name TOKEN2) is a multinational IT security company headquartered in Switzerland, providing various security solutions for multifactor authentication.
P.S. Why TOTP again?
We love FIDO, but it needs more time to become widely adopted and supported. Our research is driven by customer needs, and TOTP is still in high demand. The main reason is that it is much easier to implement.
While FIDO/FIDO2 is more secure why do you still promote TOTP?
We love FIDO, but it needs more time to become widely adopted and supported. Our research is driven by customer needs, and TOTP is still in high demand. The main reason is that it is much easier to implement.