From Puzzle to Passkey: Physical Authentication Through Rubik’s Cube Scrambles

We present a novel authentication system that transforms a Rubik's cube into a physical key for digital authentication. By reading the cube's specific arrangement among 43 quintillion possible configurations, our system generates FIDO2-compatible credentials on-demand. Unlike traditional security tokens that store credentials, the cube itself becomes part of the key with its physical state forming a deterministic seed for keypair generation. Our proof-of-concept, CubeAuthn, demonstrates this concept with a browser extension that authenticates users on WebAuthn-enabled sites using the cube's physical state as the cryptographic seed.

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