"Enable firmware update" error message for Nitrokey Pro with old firmware

[Niklap97]

Application version: 1.5 RC8
Operating system: [Windows 10]
Issue occurrency: [always]

Expected behaviour

When attempting to "Enable firmware update" for a Nitrokey Pro with a firmware older than 0.11, the reason should be stated in the error message and an alternative solution should be described if possible.

Current behaviour

Error message displays: "Device could not be set in update mode. Status code: 9"

Steps for reproduction

• Nitrokey Pro with firmware older than 0.11
• "Enable firmware update" in "Configure" in the tray icon

[LennardBoediger]

Application version: 1.5 RC8
Operating system: [Mac OS 11.2.3]
Issue occurrency: [always]

Same problem under macOS
It is also not possible to change the firmware password as it claims that the current password is not 12345678.

However, it is possible to activate the firmware update mode for the same device with pynitrokey (without specifying a firmwmware password - and therefore using the default password 12345678).

[almazyan]

I have exactly the same issue as the author but on Debian 11.

Also, it looks like there is an issue with pynitrokey.

Can somebody propose a solution please?

[szszszsz]

Hey! This looks like an udev rules problem. Can you check if you have the latest installed?
See docs.nitrokey.com for the details.

[almazyan]

Hi, thank you for your response!
I did this:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Nitrokey/libnitrokey/master/data/41-nitrokey.rules
sudo mv 41-nitrokey.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/

And then this:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

And it's still not working :/ I still see the same error "Status code: 9"

Also I see this:

It says that nitrokey is not found or it is in update but neither is true. The list command shows it. It is strange isn't it? Is my nitrokey compromised?

[szszszsz]

Thank you for the update.
What is your firmware version? Firmware update is available only for the devices with firmware v0.11 and newer.
The Status code: 9 message refers directly to the missing command implementation in the firmware.

[almazyan]

Thank you for your response.
The last firmware I flashed was heads-t430-hotp-maximized-v0.2.0-1380-gc4b964c.rom which I got from github.com/osresearch/heads

[szszszsz]

Oh, I mean the Nitrokey Pro firmware version, not NitroPad.

[almazyan]

Ah, sorry, the Nitrokey Pro firmware version is v0.15

[szszszsz]

I see. You try then to update Nitrokey Pro v0.15 to v0.15? That's weird. You may have old libnitrokey installed too, but this should work with it as well. I would like to have libnitrokey logs here to make sure. I will ask someone to guide you through it.

[almazyan]

Initially, I updated it to v14.0 then v0.15. It was OK. And now it is impossible, I don't know why.
The reason I want to update it again is that I suspect that it is somehow compromised, because my Qubes behave strangely:

https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/another-sys-net-is-appearing-after-usb-tethering-is-it-normal/16859

QubesOS/qubes-issues#8003

So I am trying to eliminate all the possible breaches.