Skip to main content
  1. Blog
  2. Article

Alex Cattle
on 29 March 2020

Smart cards login on Ubuntu


Smart cards have proliferated and are now everywhere, from work ID badges to credit cards and passports. For example, the United States Federal Government uses smart cards to control access to federal facilities and information systems because they offer an extra layer of security and respond to strict government guidelines. If used in a company, these will provide identity confirmation, verification that data has not been changed, and confidentiality via encryption.

This whitepaper will provide information on how to configure Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to operate with a smart card to provide multi-factor authentication when logging into the system both locally and remotely. For the purposes of this whitepaper, a PIVKey smart card is used as an example since they are readily accessible and contain a few basic credentials.

Read our documentation or download the whitepaper to learn more including:

  • The software and hardware prerequisites needed for smart card configuration.
  • How to set up your smart card and configure it to support smart card logins.
  • How to configure SSH smart card login.

Download the whitepaper by filling in the form below:

Related posts


Luci Stanescu
30 April 2026

Fixes available for CVE-2026-31431 (Copy Fail) Linux Kernel Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Ubuntu Article

A local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability affecting the Linux kernel has been publicly disclosed on April 29, 2026. The vulnerability has been assigned CVE ID CVE-2026-31431 and is referred to as Copy Fail. The affected component is a kernel module that provides hardware-accelerated cryptographic functions: algif_aead. The vulnerab ...


Luci Stanescu
12 March 2026

AppArmor vulnerability fixes available

Ubuntu Article

Qualys discovered several vulnerabilities in the AppArmor code of the Linux kernel. These are being referred to as CrackArmor, while CVE IDs are in the process of being assigned by the Linux Kernel CVE Numbering Authority. There are eleven patches for the nine vulnerabilities and each patch is assigned a CVE IDs: CVE-2026-23268, CVE-2026- ...


Ijlal Loutfi
6 March 2026

Sovereign clouds: enhanced data security with confidential computing 

Confidential computing Article

Increasingly, enterprises are interested in improving their level of control over their data, achieving digital sovereignty, and even building their own sovereign cloud. However, this means moving beyond thinking about just where your data is stored to thinking about the entire data lifecycle.  In this blog, we cover the differences betwe ...