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Passkeys Explained: The End of Passwords (sentientrant.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Passkeys are built on the FIDO2 standard (CTAP2 + WebAuthn standards). They remove the shared secret, stop phishing at the source, and make credential-stuffing useless.

But adoption is still low, and interoperability between Apple, Google, and Microsoft isn’t seamless.

I broke down how passkeys work, their strengths, and what’s still missing

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[–] 36 points 10 months ago (14 children)

You can store Passkeys in open source password managers.

I don't know most of my passwords, so the step to passkeys doesn't feel like a big one. I also really like the flow of pressing Login; Bitwarden pops up a prompt without me initiating it; I press confirm. Done, logged in, and arguably more secure due to the surrounding phishing and shared secrets benefits.

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  • [–] 31 points 10 months ago* (7 children)

    Sure, they probably work great when you have your *passkey manager on the device, but that's not when I need to have backup routes into my accounts. When using a new device, or someone else's, having even a complicated password that can be typed or copied-pasted has way more functionality.

    As far a I can tell, using passkeys would only risk locking me out of my accounts. Everyone else is already effectively locked out.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Can't you access your password manager from a web browser? Or your phone?

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Oops, meant passkey manager, fixed it.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Isn't that the same thing? All my credentials & passkeys are in the cross-platform password manager available from all my devices & any web browser. Passkeys even have a cross-device flow, so we can just scan a QR code & use a phone to sign into anything.

    Manually keying in a password just feels so boomer.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Not at all the same. I can type or dictate my passwords on any device with a keyboard. I am not reliant on an individual device continuing to work. In fact I could get all new devices tomorrow, with no access to any previous device, and log into all my accounts within minutes.

    Passkeys do not allow, and specifically prevent, that.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    I am not reliant on an individual device continuing to work. In fact I could get all new devices tomorrow, with no access to any previous device, and log into all my accounts within minutes.

    Exactly the same with a password manager which stores passkeys. Are you reading before responding?

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    You could also use dedicated hardware to store your keys. Any FIDO USB key will do. I have a Yubikey that cost me less than 30 bucks.

    It's really handy, because I frequently use someone else's device for work. All I have to do is plug it in, press the button on the key and enter the master password for the passkey storage. It's like having a password manager on a USB stick.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Yeah the moods in this thread, like

    “[I don’t understand this]!”

    “[I don’t trust this]!”

    “[It doesn’t fix everything]!”

    “[This doesn’t benefit me]!”

    “[What’s wrong with old way]!?”

    And like, all valid feelings… just the reactions are a bit… intense? Especially considering it’s a beta stage auth option that amounts to a fancy version of the old sec key industry standard, not the mark of the beast.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

    Because we all know it will eventually go from a "neat" to mandatory with vendor lock-in for no other reason than "fuck you".

    We've all seen it a few hundred times now with X, and Y.

    I get a few daily pop-ups for "Want to use a pass key". One from my bank. No I don't want to link my fingerprint to my bank account especially in a way that will lock me out when I replace my phone.

    Remember folks: Biometrics (What you are) is not constitutionally protected but what you know is (for now at least).

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    If we cut and run every time a big corporation “embraces” a new standard, just to lessen the pain of the day it’s inevitably “extinguished,“ we’d miss out on quite a lot.

    This standard was open from the start. It was ours. Big corps sprinted ahead with commercial development, as they do, but just because they’re first to implement doesn’t mean we throw in the towel.

    Also:

    1. Bio auth isn’t necessary. It’s just how Google/Apple do things on their phones. It’s not part of the FIDO2 standard.
    2. It works with arbitrary password managers including FLOSS and lots of hardware options.
    3. Passkeys can sync to arbitrary devices, browsers, device bound sessions, whatever.
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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the FIDO2 standard works. It is not designed to be vendor specific and as other people in this thread point out, plenty of open-source secrets managers and hardware implement passkeys.

    What we've seen is the typical Silicon Valley model of "embrace, extend, extinguish" so you're right to be wary of any implementation by Google or Microsoft.

    Same goes for biometrics - how you unlock the passkey isn't specified in the standard. It is left up to the implementation. If you don't want to use biometrics, you don't have to.

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