I forgot my security key pin, should I reset it?

I get the message:
“The security key is locked because the wrong PIN was entered too many times. You’ll need to reset the security key.”

This was confusing to me because I didn’t download any YubiKey software. Why would I have to reset the key unless Brave is managing it somehow.

Only one of the websites I use requires me to put in a Brave browser security key PIN. I updated that website to use another 2FA method already.

Now I’m left with a security key setup protected by a PIN and I don’t know how to get Brave to forget my security key and PIN so I can start over again.

Secondary question: is the security key being used for something else I don’t know about? It seems the browser uses it to protect “sign-in data” which I don’t use. I use a password manager for that.

I want to choose the “Reset your security key” option since I don’t believe it will actually wipe my key. I’m pretty sure it’s ready-only.

I don’t want to wipe my key and have to reset the YubiKey for every other account. However, since I don’t have YubiKey software installed on my device I’m hoping that Brave will forget about the key and I can set it up again just for Brave.

I found the solution but I posted the question in case someone else came across a similar situation. I couldn’t find any documentation on using security keys with Brave or anybody talking about this anywhere else.

I found the issue by downloading the YubiKey Manager and discovered that I couldn’t change the PIN with this app either. This confirmed to me that Brave actually saved information onto the security key. Until now, I assumed the security key had some internal readonly data. I thought using the Manager was the only way to write limited amounts of data onto the key.

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