- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.ml
A rebuttal to an anti-passkey, pro-TOTP post that has made the rounds on Lemmy as well.
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Not much of a rebuttal imho. We still have the problem that passkeys are ok in theory, but in practice they’re being pushed as a way to increase lock-in and don’t offer compelling advantages over well-managed passwords.
But most people don’t have well managed passwords. And me having good password hygiene doesn’t stop my data being hacked when someone working at a subcontracting firm to a company I use leaks all my data.
It also is annoying to have to log in over many steps with 2fa, often forced to email or SMS.
Collectively improving security benefits us all.
I think the point about lusers not being able to manage passwords has been argued to death elsewhere, so I won’t take issue with that.
me having good password hygiene doesn’t stop my data being hacked when someone working at a subcontracting firm to a company I use leaks all my data
What has this to do with passkeys? Are you sending your password in plaintext to the contractor who stores it that way, unencrypted? That’s a separate problem entirely. The only benefit I see with just sending them your public key is that they can’t leak your private key, whereas if you used one password for everything, and sent it to them, they could leak it.
Am I missing something? Would passkeys offer an advantage over a password manager? What if the website assigns you a password via DH so that users can’t pick bad ones or reuse them, would it have the same advantages?
2FA can be super annoying, but again I think it’s a separate issue. If I get control of your phone or laptop then 2FA might save you, but passkeys won’t.
It sounds like they’re saying that if you can manage your passwords then do so yourself and avoid passkeys, but if you can’t/don’t want to then use passkeys.
And they are pointing out that the company is far more likely to lose your password than you are.
Convenience vs security, but the weakest link is probably not the user.
I think you’re mixing up compromise of an account with compromise of the data associated with that account.
If a particular piece of data is accessible to people of a dozen accounts, compromise of any of those accounts potentially compromises the data. That’s a legitimate concern for people who want certain data secured, whether other accounts with access are also secure. In some cases, it may be best to have an authentication policy that provides a baseline level of protection even for the most clueless users, rather than a system where you’re able to secure your own account.
I follow you, but if we can impose passkeys on the security-inept people we are forced to give our sensitive data to, couldn’t we instead force them to use good security?
It’s been like 25 years since the security world basically moved on from assuming that users could be trusted to act securely. We gotta design processes and protocols that keep things secure even with people who have bad habits.
I can secure my email, but every email I send or receive touches at least one other mailbox I don’t control, of some other user. Same with text messages, social media posts, etc. The digital world we use has a billion overlapping people, some with escalated privileges as employees or admins or mods or whatever. We can’t make them perfect, so we should design systems that work well even with imperfect people.
I couldn’t possibly argue with that
I’m saying that bad user passwords allow data to be hacked. When it’s the credentials of someone with access, like an employee of companies with your data, then that data is more easily compromised if they have crappy passwords. It’s harder to compromise with passkeys. It is not just your password hygiene that protects your data.
Here is a recent example in Australia. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-06/asos-app-users-sent-hacked-message/107236520
That doesn’t say anything about passwords. Looks like someone’s device was accessed. Maybe you just understand this better than I do.
Ok, here’s another one from Netherlands. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/hacker-claims-123456-password-let-them-breach-the-danish-national-registry-accessing-8-8-million-records-it-and-data-services-company-with-weak-passwords-linked-source-of-the-hack
If the people with access to your data have weak passwords, then so do you.
But that’s exactly the problem. Those that were the target audience for the article do not have well managed passwords. For them the passkeys arguably do increase security, while having a bit more “lock-in”.
For those that have well managed passwords (like probably most in this community), they are perfectly fine to use because they don’t have lock-in either. I have full control over my used passkeys.
Basically you’re not getting the “normies” to use proper password management, and for them they do provide additional security and convenience. They can always add more passkeys on different vendors, you’re not limited to just 1 per service. Yes, adding them is a hassle, but so it’s managing passwords and following higher security standards in general.
The “normies” don’t have a clue what passkeys are either.
They don’t need to. It just works to log them in when they’re using one of their own trusted devices. Being able to unlock their phone gives them full access to the services (apps, websites) that are authenticated to that device.
I know that, and you know that, but passkeys are supposed to solve security-related problems by reducing friction.
What passkeys can’t overcome is people dismissing the popups asking if they want to switch to passkeys or create them.
The problem with passkeys is they are 20 years too late, and no one cares.
What passkeys can’t overcome is people dismissing the popups asking if they want to switch to passkeys or create them.
I think it’d actually be pretty easy. Just ask:
Trust this device, with biometrics?
Most people will say yes on their Apple/Samsung/Google devices.
How do they increase lock in?
a way to increase lock-in
Lock-in was already being achieved by mandatory use of apps which require iOS or Google Play services.
Plenty of banks etc which I can simply not use because of this requirement, and others which downgrade you to password+SMS security (used to be a physical TOTP token) if you refuse their app.
but in practice they’re being pushed as a way to increase lock-in
Which ones are doing this? Give specific examples of sites that are forcing you to use a specific TOTP or passkey validator.
The kind of lock in I’m thinking of is with e.g. Google, Apple, or Microsoft when they take charge of the passkeys for you.
That’s entirely optional and not forced. You can use FOSS password managers that store your passkeys, that can log into all those services.
If you’re referring to proprietary password managers (IE like google or apples), then that concern applies equally to all the passwords you’re storing with them. So that concern is not specific to passkeys.
I don’t disagree with any of that. You and I will be fine, as long as whatever sites we use don’t insist on evil-only providers. The trouble I’m thinking of is for average uncritical phone enjoyers who are guided into a flow where they’re migrated to using passkeys with whatever propriety junk they’re using and end up locked into Matacorp Secure Cloud who now control their access to all their accounts, where once they had a list of passwords written in the back page of their diary.
The author of this post works in Apple, Passwords team. They do not deny that there’s attestation; they argue that it’s only used to prevent bad actors.
Cool, we’ll trust corporations then!
Corporations never, ever, act badly!
It is not like they are treated as people with rights but fewer consequences for their actions, right? Right, guys?
and they would never violate your trust and later force this onto you because the love their users.
the more apologetics for this shit i see, the less i trust it.
Agreed. Even if you trust her words, she’s only one person and Apple could override any decisions she makes.
It makes me wonder about the people in Google who worked for, maintained, and advocated the openness of Android. Only now for Google to continually lock it down.
Passwords are protected (for now) by the first amendment. You can’t be compelled to tell what it is. Passkeys can be seized with a warrant. This only matters in the US but it does matter and I literally never see that addressed.
That’s not really a bash on passkeys so much as it is a bash on storage methods. Anything with a password that is not no knowledge encrypted is at the exact same risk because the password doesn’t matter to the company the warrant is issued to.
*Fourth Amendment.
Fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. That applies to passkeys. First amendment protects speech, that’s what protects your password. You can’t be compelled to tell that because you can’t be compelled to say things, not because there’s any protection against the data being seized. IANAL, feel free to go into more detail if you still disagree
First time I am reading people orate their passwords🤣😂🤣😂🤣
Now you’re going to tell me the US has free press🤣😂🤣😂🤣🤣😂
- Describing TOTP as a “great solution” for adding security to a password-based account. When the most common threat model on the web is phishing (a word the post never mentions!), TOTP hardly buys you anything. TOTP is phishable.
If (after decades of awareness) you manage to get phished while using TOTP, you shouldn’t be trusted with a phone or any digital information at all
Granted. But there are plenty of users who probably shouldn’t be trusted with any digital accounts, but they still have to use them for daily life. If we can make it harder for them to mess up we should.
The problem is that if they’re getting phished with TOTPs then they’ll walk through a scammer over the phone to let them access their accounts other ways.
You can put all the security in place all you want but 99% of breaches aren’t coming from red team actors “hacking” into a system. It’s way easier (and even moreso now with LLMs able to do robo calls with human sounding voices) and get Brian from accounting to give up his shit…or even the CEO to give up his.
I’ve seen it all, they willfully will give over their access because they’re dumb as fuck.
Can we Not Act like only idiots can get phished? Nobody is Safe, especially when the phishing attempt is incredibly convincing
Most of the people who get phished, are not educated enough to avoid it. They don’t want to be, because computers are just supposed to work and not be something they need to learn.
If you’re educated and ask questions vs just assuming everything is legit and giving away everything they ask for then you realize quickly that phishing is not as convincing as you’re making it out to be.
Phished doesn’t mean just a plain old phone call or email these days. It can still happen, and does. But there are now reverse proxy systems that clone legit web pages to steal TOTP by appearing legit, and they’re highly successful.
I didn’t know of this, I still prefer the control TOTP gives you but yeah, that makes an argument for the passkeys I guess.
I know someone who works at a fairly large public university where TOTP is required. People (mostly students) are still constantly getting phished, despite TOTP. I guess young people don’t have the decades of awareness that some of us have.
TOTP tokens are often distributed as QR codes, where you can store in more than one place, store/copy/transfer in plaintext between people or places. Compromise of that token gives permanent access to all TOTP codes generated.
I’m not a fan of how most TOTP apps and implementations actually work right now.
The biggest problem I have with passkeys is big companies aren’t implementing them to improve your security - they’re implementing them because it absolves them of liability and responsibility for implementing good security on THEIR end and allows them to implement whatever the fuck vibe-coded bullshit nonsense they want without any knowledgeable or skilled staff, and even if it’s good for me too, I’m not inclined to do these assholes any favors. It’ll just make them sloppier and lazier on other elements of security and they’ll turn around and put the blame on the user, and courts will go right along with it because nobody in the legal system can find their asses with both hands.
Using established and tested security implementations instead of rolling your own has been considered good practice since forever. It’s not a bad thing.
It’s not about the implementation - it’s about what passkeys do and don’t do.
Passkeys prevent someone from stealing hashed passwords from the SERVER, but if the server is already compromised badly enough to let someone in, all of the data stored on that server is compromised already anyway. Companies want to use passkeys because there is less involved in implementing secure login credentials, but that is only ONE tiny part of overall end to end security, and I do not for a SECOND believe that they are going to keep on highly skilled, security-minded developers at real salaries when the C-suite says “We’re using passkeys. We’re secure. Fire the high priced developers and get me some interns who can use Claude.”
TLDR: Passkeys are not a magic bullet and they aren’t a game changer, and the false sense of security they push is dangerous.
I realy dont think that’s a thing. End-user login security is a tiny footnote on page 729 of the 2000+ page security document of a large company’s cyber security department. Switching that to passkeys will not change anything about how the company handles security. AI will. But not passkeys.
And as we have seen many times, companies have been bad with security already and many password databases have been breached. Having a tool that limits the impact of bad security is a good thing.
Exactly, people keep focusing on whether passkeys are secure as a concept, and they are. However, what we actually need to talk about is how they’re going to be used in the wild, and what companies are likely to do with them. That’s what’s going to affect vast majority of the people.
Attestation for passkeys (software-based, syncable credentials) is antithetical to their mass market goals, and would freeze out independent, non-corporate-backed credential managers. It’s an explicit non-goal of the designers of passkeys, who work together in a forum anyone can join.
The web wasn’t supposed to be controlled by corps either, and look where we are now.
If passkeys were to follow the same path as the web, here’s what it would look like. Corporate passkeys get the most users because of OS integration and convenience. Now that they have all the users they can commandeer the standards, and make them so complex and evolve so quickly that non-corporate implementations can’t keep up (think Firefox vs Chrome). Corporations convince websites to drop support for outdated passkeys, citing security issues. Non-corporate implementations are locked out. Monopoly is established.
And now that passkeys are centralized to corps, the government can exert power on them, mandating hardware attestation for things like hardware-backed id and age verification. They push for backdoors, so they can log into anybody’s account. Bye bye privacy.
Question: Why did these corps implement TOTP? You should be able to answer this from an economic perspective of them trying to save money.
Another question: why aren’t these corporations locking down TOTP to restrict them to their own validator apps, in the same way you’re proposing that they might do for passkeys?
why aren’t these corporations locking down TOTP to restrict them to their own validator apps
But they do. There are TOTP implementations that have been intentionally modified to prevent using standard apps. I don’t remember other examples right now, but I think Steam Guard is one.
Why did these corps implement TOTP?
To reduce support load from people getting their accounts hacked and asking support to get them re-instated. I don’t doubt that these incentives also drive the push for passkeys, but passkeys are much more opaque and tightly integrated with the OS, and is thus more vulnerable to centralization.
why aren’t these corporations locking down TOTP to restrict them to their own validator apps
They are. Authy is the biggest offender I know.
Edit: some info about how Authy locks you in: https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/general/switching-to-aegis-for-totp-codes.html. Note that some websites integrate directly with Authy and force you to use Authy to set up the TOTP. The only way out is to use a rooted phone to transfer the codes to another app like Aegis.
I don’t doubt that these incentives also drive the push for passkeys, but passkeys are much more opaque and tightly integrated with the OS, and is thus more vulnerable to centralization.
I’m not sure what you mean by integrated into the OS. I use a FOSS password manager on android (keepassdx), storing passkeys both for apps and websites. When the browser or an app asks for a passkey, android uses the password filling service you’ve chosen (in my case keepass), and it loads up, no differently from when there’s a password prompt. I’m not sure how it works on other platforms like iOS, windows, or linux, but at least on android, you can use a FOSS password manager not integrated into the OS.
They are. Authy is the biggest offender I know.
Specific sites aren’t locking down TOTP, this seems to be an EEE scheme of Authy specifically, since as you say the TOTP codes provided by sites still work with other authenticators. I’m referring to the case where say, amazon forces you to use their app to login, or creates their own custom TOTP or passkey app, and won’t let you log into their site without it, and then you have no control over your login method or codes.
By integrated into the OS, I’m talking about the major corporate implementations, like Apple, Microsoft Windows, or Google Android. The advantage is that you don’t need to install an app or browser extension, and then give that app permissions. Everything is already set up. I’ve seen some websites like Amazon try to automatically set up passkeys for you, so it’s likely that a good portion of the population already has passkeys set up in these corporate passkey managers, before they have the opportunity to learn about alternatives.
Speaking of Keepass, you should check out these discussions:
https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#issuecomment-1994673954
https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10406
In short, keepass had a way of exporting passkeys unencrypted to disk, and some people did not like that, threatening things like:
This implementation is not spec compliant and has the potential to be blocked by relying parties.
The unfortunate piece is that your product choices can have both positive and negative impacts on the ecosystem as a whole. I’ve already heard rumblings that KeepassXC is likely to be featured in a few industry presentations that highlight security challenges with passkey providers, the need for functional and security certification, and the lack of identifying passkey provider attestation (which would allow RPs to block you, and something that I have previously rallied against but rethinking as of late because of these situations).
This is exactly what the “passkeys are a trap” article warned about. Passkey attestation allows websites to reject specific clients, just like how SafetyNet allows apps to block GrapheneOS users. In the future, banking websites or google.com could force usage of passkeys, and block usage of keepass. Are there enough keepass users to protest this? Certainly hasn’t worked well for GrapheneOS and SafetyNet.
this seems to be an EEE scheme of Authy specifically
Functionally, it’s locked down because it’s nearly impossible to migrate the TOTP codes to another app.
You don’t really see custom TOTP apps because users don’t want to have to install an app just to generate TOTP codes for a specific website. Google Authenticator could have done this, but I think Google decided to start moving towards passkeys instead of enshittifying Google Authenticator.
There is much more incentive to do this with passkeys, because you can lock down passkey sharing in ways that can’t be done with TOTP. For example, Netflix could block passkeys from any client that allows passkey copies and exports, like Keepass, in order to block account sharing.
what makes passkeys any different from all the other times they have embrace, extend, extinguished? what, fundamentally, stops them from using attestation in the exact way the user described? specifically, what stops the following scenario from playing out?
- passkey support becomes commonplace across the web
- many websites stop using passwords due to their inherent security issues
- most users (for brevity, say 90% or more) just use their OS to store passkeys because it’s easier
- apple provides attestation for passkeys stored in the Secure Enclave
- google provides attestation for whatever their business goals are
- google refuses passkeys that aren’t attested due to their “security issues”
- apple does the same, which has the added benefit of killing devices without a Secure Enclave
- maybe PCI-DSS requires attested passkeys because of “security issues”
- maybe financial institutions require attestation (similar to the ctsProfileMatch issue with GrapheneOS)
- 90% or more of users don’t notice or care about steps 4-9
- most of the 10% or less need to use at least one account that requires such an attested passkey
- idk what happens with firefox but i’m sure many firefox users (including me) have encountered a website that could work with firefox but chooses not to (based on User-Agent or similar)
obviously that isn’t the only scenario one could envision but i don’t really see what makes this one unreasonable to expect
Once you can correctly answer the question you responded to, you’ll see why its against their material interests to EEE logins, whether its TOTP or passkeys.
well idk about you but i have the steam guard app on my phone, and it’s a pain in the ass too so it’s not that. plus, unlike TOTP, passkeys are dead simple and integrated into the OS. so i can honestly say i have no idea what you’re getting at and why it applies to passkeys as well as it applies to TOTP.
“TOTP is phishable.”
i can safely say both articles were made by insane people. all i can say is, to keep using generated passwords and offline 2fa codes. dont click on the naked lady in the spam folder.
have a good night, kids.
I have a basic question, I learned that MFA should draw from multiples of “things you have” (totp) and “things you know” (passwords). There’s all this talk of passkeys replacing passwords, but aren’t passkeys in the “thing you have” category, not the “thing you know” category? My worry is that an unlocked computer or unlocked phone will let someone access ALL of a person’s accounts because now they have the thing and don’t need you at all. Putting access to my entire digital life behind my 4-9 point lock symbol? Or worse, a fingerprint?
The idea is that they Cross the Mark on thing you have and certainty on who you are saying you are. The latter comes in the Form of biometric authentication for normies Like Face/touch id
I have been hesitant in the same way. I have not until recently understood where the passkeys are stored, and then understood that they then become a “thing tou have”. The passkey is stored on my computer, I prove I have access to my computer, and that is the authentication.
I am still hestitant since it often is just one factor, and I feel I have to manage them much more carefully.
There are actually 3 categories (though the idea of 2FA is picking 2 out of 3):
- Something you know (passwords, PINs, security questions…)
- Something you have (hardware keys, TOTP, smartcards, SMS/push-notification…)
- Something you are (fingerprints, facial recognition, iris scans…)
But passkeys collapse 2 of those into one by having the passkey algorithm include (as a step of the key derivation) a passcode or some biometric data… that’s why most passkey systems require some form of verification. Though it’s up to your authenticator which method is used.
Those two categories aren’t really meaningful, but even if you consider them to be, passwords (apart from a master password for your password manager) also should never be in the “things you know” category, because then it means you’ve memorized them, and are not using a password manager to generate completely random ones.
And unless you’ve got an incredible memory that can memorize unique passwords like “+28x@!8eaEak!” for 10+ sites, then you’re likely using a pattern or single password than can be compromised.
I do consider the master password to my password manager as my “thing I know”, and not the randomly generated passwords it stores. But you’re saying that have-vs-know is not really important in the security space, that was mostly just a handy shorthand?
so are passkeys just a simplified workflow version of the complicated dance I have to do on windows to get git commits to push easily with the public key from putty-gen? But also the private key is sometimes locked to the device it was generated on? I guess I should read some actual technical docs on em.
no, fuck passkeys. they will lock everyone in with their proprietary bullshit.
use a good generated password in a manager if you will. don’t trust anything but corps are pushing.
What propietary bs? It’s an open standard.
the www is also an open standard, and google controls it through chrome.
that’s quite a leap.
Yes google does have a lot of control over the HTML and HTTP specs because they control the most popular web browser. Whether people are or will in the future be “locked in” to google for that reason is debatable.
Regardless, the potential for a company to dominate the implementation of a specification is not a reason not to create said specification.
Regardless, the potential for a company to dominate the implementation of a specification is not a reason not to create said specification
yes it is
So we shouldn’t have created HTTP because Google might appear?
we should have learned our lesson after they did and done our damndest to create protocols immune to capture. there were excuses in 1989, there aren’t now
How do you create protocols immune to capture?
Imagine if HTTP explicitly documented as part of the standard that the “User-Agent” header, when provided, must include a tamper-proof cryptographic signature that allows to securely identify which browser version the user has (with a consortium maintaining a list of registered browsers) so that websites can reject access if you are not using a browser they trust or they don’t like that your browser is too old…
Considering how much abuse there has been with the User-Agent header… I can’t imagine it being a good idea to include such a thing in the standard.
If on creation HTTP had included things like that, then I think Gopher and other competitors at the time might not have been a bad option, honestly.
I don’t see your point I’m sorry. This would make it easier for Google to exclude small competitors.
Is this the new “killing baby Hitler”?
Honestly not sure what’s going on in this thread.
Don’t invent the internet because then you will have internet companies.
google will also control the most popular passkey manager. is that not obvious by how they already control the most popular password manager, browser, search engine and more?
I’m really struggling to follow your logic here. You’re saying they already have the most popular password manager so we shouldn’t support a next gen, more secure, open standard because Google will have the most popular client for that also?
The obvious problem with this reasoning is that… there will be alternatives of you don’t wish to use googles implementation.
unless google finds a way to lock you in (or out), like they’ve done pretty much everywhere else. me and you using foss won’t change what’s coming for society at large.
i mean how can you not see how they have been hoovering up everything on the internet for the last couple of decades and think they won’t find a way to to capture this too and run it their way, like all before it?
I do see Google’s behavior and I’m certain that they will do their best to capture this as they have everything else.
However, it’s an absurdity to suggest that we should not develop new protocols because google will act to ensure they have the largest market share.
What are you talking about? I’m locked in with all my passkeys that are stored in my open source self hosted password manager that syncs across all my devices?
Like, I’m confused on what you mean
people self-hosting their open-source password managers are in the vast minority. most people will use whatever is pushed to them, which is gonna be vendor lock-in.
Sure but that’s not an inherent issue with passkeys.
You can use whatever proprietary password manager you’d like. Sure that often means people are using the device built in ones…
But why should that stop me personally from using passkeys?
it is. passkeys are not memorable.
and if all you are thinking about is how you should personally set up your own computer, you are missing the forest for the trees. we will keep happening upon android type situations if we’re being that individualist.
Nah, lock-in is not a safety feature. 16+ random chars are plenty, and if cracking gets better I’ll go to 20 or 30 chars. My pw manager doesn’t care what strings go in it or which device opens it up.
You can have passkeys on multiple devices. I use them on different platforms for the same sites.
How do you transfer your passkey to a new device?
If you use a self-hosted password manager like bitwarden, then its there. If you use a file-based password manager like keepass, then you can use any syncing method you choose, and its no different from passwords.
not sure about every OS but the ios password app has a menu button to export them to other apps. I have exported mine to my own self hosted vaultwarden. took 2 minutes
You don’t, you can have multiple passkeys, one for each device.
ok.
How do you add a new device to your account without a password or the old device?
Password, then get a prompt about registering a new passkey.
After that I can use the passkey registered on either device.
Edit: to clarify, most sites still let you log in with a password after you’ve registered a passkey
The the account is still as vulnerable as a password.
That’s my workflow as well 26 random characters, a yubikey (and Aegis TOTP for sites that don’t have fido or similar) and I’m good.
I like the idea of a Yubikey but there is no way it would survive more than a month on me due to the conditions where I work. And getting a physical key then not having it on my body at all times is a non-starter.
I keep my keepass .kdbx in on a webdav server and that covers any device I can think of.
Do you work in a blender? It’s a pretty solid bit of plastic, should be fine in a pocket or wherever the device you’re using it with is.
Maintenance at a blast furnace. I am exposed to acidic vapours, caustic vapours, ambient heat in the 60c range, radiant heat in the 1000c range, rock from the nanometer up to 30cm size, phenolic resins, oil mists, and metal powders. And then there’s the crawling around over, under, and between equipment.
Not every tech-savvy person works in an office.
Cool. Hope it’s ok on your health. I suppose you have some way to keep your phone safe, and don’t need to do 2FA while exposed to all of those things. You could probably wrap one up pretty well and still have the NFC work too.
Totp with a backup of the secrets/seed qr stored in a kdbx. If my phone melts it’s a 24hr problem at most.
Passkeys also aren’t lock-in. You control them, and your FOSS password manager likely already supports them.
you are required to use a 3rd party. that third party has control. you can’t switch. that is lock-in.
I’m using a FOSS password manager for like 6+ passkeys right now, on some of the biggest sites. So this is just demonstratably false.
I’m telling you why passkeys are garbage:
Case 1
- Login to website
- Maybe use 2FA device
- Website creates session cookie
Never have to login again for the next few months
Case 2
- Go to website
- Use password manager to auto fill credentials
Click like 2 buttons and you’re done
Case 3
- Create passkey
- Passkey is stored on propietary, trust me bro, “we will never share this with the NSA or FBI” Apple or something account where you can’t export them
- User becomes dependent on cloud provider
- User will easier forget their real login data because they don’t use them
- User is fucked if account get’s locked/deleted
- User can still be hacked by simply compromising machine
- No 2FA
Passkey is stored on propietary, trust me bro, “we will never share this with the NSA or FBI” Apple or something account where you can’t export them
No. Most FOSS password managers support them, even keepass and bitwarden. You control them, you can export them as you wish, and even use them across multiple devices. I know because I do this.
Do you really believe your average Apple, Google/Android or Microsoft/Windows user use these?
No, but the “normal, worst case” usage of passwords is still far worse than even that case. Most people just re-use the same password for everything. This is why almost all companies use phone numbers and text messages as a totp now.
If we’re comparing worst usage of passwords vs worst usage of passkeys, passkeys still wins.
passkeys can perfectly be used with third party password managers. everything you say here can apply to passwords if you use the Os provided manager.
you can absolutely have 2fa with passkeys. most platforms don’t do it since it adds little value
Os provided password manager
That’s the neat point. You don’t have to use one when you enter your normal login credentials and the average user like does not use one.
But with passkeys you are forced to use one and the average user will use the default one of their vendor.
most platforms don’t do it since it adds little value
Yeah because they obviously don’t care about security (like machine compromise - that’s why there is 2FA in the first place), which contradicts all advantages of passkeys.
every single argument I’ve seen against passkeys could be said against TOTP and 2FA in general.
- SMS token: they need to know your phone number. it’s a privacy issue. also actual lock in to one device.
- MS authenticator with push notifications: actual lock in to a single app
- TOTP: you need a manager to store it, way more phishable than passkeys
and yes, you could use third part TOTP managers, but as you said, the average user wont. I dont feel any argument against passkeys is particularly strong.
Who has used as argument that passkeys are phishable?
The argument is that passkeys include “attestation” as part of the official standard, which is a method explicitly intended for services to be able to securely identify what local authenticator you used with the explicit purpose of allowing the service to reject access if it’s not considered “safe”. Can you say that about TOTP?
The problem is not the general idea of passkeys… there are actually good things in the standard. The criticism was that there’s also a part in the standard that seems perfectly designed for companies to use them in anti-consumer practices.
Let’s just go ahead and add a third, fourth, AND fifth authentication factor so maybe I’ll kill myself first thing every morning
True story … take it as you like,
my 8 months old reddit account was filter flagged as a bot after commenting the following
“death to the Epstein class and fuck Israel the genocide state”
The only way to get it back according to reddit was if i used IOS authentication passkey.
Not the normal password manager i use on Firefox but no it must be passkey on ios.
Now i am convinced that 8200 unit of the Zionist regime have my facial biometrics.
This ^
the idea is that there will be a ‘central repository of trust’ and it ain’t you. the step of moving that to ‘verifying you’ is short. the next step of monitoring you comes for free. the next step of managing you is the plan.
A passkey is just traditional PKI in a trench coat, your biometrics are A) not even required as you can just use a PIN and B) are not sent from iOS when unlocking the passkey.
I love how you provided no rebuttal to my two points. The EFF even goes into detail on how it works. The beauty of an open standard is that you can verify these assumptions of yours.
I don’t need to, if you read my comment again you would understand my point.
But let me try to breakdown what i mean; you need to wake up from your lala land, if you truly think and believe corporations that are actively participating in genocide and killing children will really care about “policies and terms of usage”.
Your statement reads like someone who used to believe the “don’t be evil“ google policy citing it as evidence in his head.
If that is how you stand, then good for you, but i don’t, actually i view such corporations as a dangerous entities to humanity.
Hope its clear for you now.
I misread your second sentence as “my 8 month old’s reddit account” and was confused when there was no payoff to the premise of the shitpost.
Why would I want a convenient passkey stored securely inside my password manager if I can just, much more conventiently, lock myself out of my account by losing my phone?
Don’t put it in your phone?
would be nice, but apparently i do not exist according to my bank without a phone on my person 24/7
I’m using GNU pass, it doesn’t support passkeys. I’m using Arch with Firefox. When a site requesting a passkey, Firefox says touch the key. I don’t know what to do so I cancel the process and search for a workaround.
For example npmjs.org, they require passkey for publishing packages, so I rather have to create an API token which supposed to be for CICDs and publish the package with that instead.
It’s f*cking awkward. I have a secure password manager, offline, nowhere shared, even the passwords are encrypted. Don’t force passkeys on me for no reason, I was secure before as well. And even if you do, at least it should work. As always Linux users left behind.
“Even the passwords are encrypted” I would certainly hope so! Seems like the bare minimum for a password manager 😄
Yeah but most of them are just opened up and stays like that, e.g. I open an app and it can read my gnome keyring passwords
Without browser extensions, Firefox only supports hardware passkeys, so it’s waiting for you to plug one in and touch the “attentive” button.
I’m another gnu pass user, made a similar complaint in one of the other threads. I see dessalines claiming here that they use passkeys just fine with a 'FOSS" password manager. I guess that means it’s up to us to contribute an implementation of some kind.
There’s a discussion/issue on the codeberg hosting of the passff extension that sells to lay out what is needed: https://codeberg.org/PassFF/passff/issues/581
Thanks 🙏
I have a secure password manager, offline, nowhere shared, even the passwords are encrypted.
How can the service provider tell, though?
The point of passkeys is to create an authentication flow that is easier for users to keep secure. The question, then, becomes whether a service provider should make user authentication decisions based on the worst case scenario, best case scenario, or average case scenario. Passkeys are a reasonable way to make sure almost all of your users have secure login credentials, even if the best of the best users would have just as secure login credentials with traditional passphrases.
