Uhhh… Can someone ELI18 to me the problem with passkeys? I use them wherever available and find them very convenient.
Yeah i can sum it up for you
I have the opposite situation, I bought yubikeys but nobody supports them.
Indeed. Why so many recommend them I have no idea.
Honestly, if you have a password manager that supports security keys then buy two cheap keys (one for backup) like the Thetis FIDO U2F Security Key and use those to secure your password vault. For everything else just use TOTP and Passkeys stored in your vault.
I invested in Yubikeys and yes it was a waste.
I’m getting ready to roll them out at work but it’s basically exclusively for the password managers. Having a password manager and every account be unique isn’t helpful if everyone’s going to just use shit passwords for their password manager
Has this energy…
sure, you can use a passkey as a primary authentication, but only “a device” or “system”(keypass/1pass etc) knows the passkey detail. with only passkey, if my passkey provider/ device is compromised then everything is lost. having single factor auth seems like a bad idea.
a password is something that I can know, so is still useful as a protection mechanism. having two factor auth should include password and passkey, which seems entirely reasonable whilst also providing an easier path forward for people used to TOTP.
Remember when tap-to-pay was new and didn’t work at a lot of places and some people were freaked out over it?
And now most of us use it without a 2nd thought.
I speculate passkeys will be like that.
I’d use it if it didn’t cost extra in my country. Swiping my card really isn’t much harder
Wow that’s madness
You can store passkeys in your password manager lol
I’ll use banks as an example
If they cared about your security there would be mobile app or website.
Hell, credit cards would still require a signature.
It’s about cost first and foremost and then convenience.
Has nothing about you as a consumer. They don’t give 2 shits about you as a consumer.
I mean you’re right about banks but your examples make no sense.
Banks generally don’t support 2fa, which is bad. Some banks (fidelity) still have character limits on passwords because they stores it in plaintext until recently so you could use it through the telephone system. They could implement a secure tap to pay system on your phones with enhanced security, rather than relying on Google to handle their job. And for credit cards themselves, switch to chip and pin.
“Banks don’t have mobile apps”?? “Signatures are secure”???🤡
How easy is it to fake a signature for a normal person who has not practiced a person’s signature for the intent purpose of faking it? Have you ever tried faking your parents signature to get out of school? I have.
Now the infrastructure required to adequately check signatures is not practical hence it doesn’t exist. It’s why we moved to pins. Pins are small and 2fa doesn’t exist for banks because again it’s about the bare minimum and they are out to make money and don’t care about customers plus there’s government safeguards in place specific to banking.
I will continue to argue that going back in time signatures are infinitely more secure than a 4 digit pin let alone tap but we have traded security for convenience.
Anyways full admit that I’m batshit crazy.
Do you think signatures were at all secure? If they cared about security they’d do chip+pin like most civilized countries.
With proper infrastructure yes signatures are extremely secure. But that proper infrastructure doesn’t exist.
Passkeys are one exception to the familiar pattern of “we give you more SeCuRiTY so we can spy on you more and control your behaviour better”. They actually are more secure. Problem is, a lot of technical issues with it still, a ton of stuff not working correctly yet
I’m still appalled that my Yubikey / FIDO2 still doesnt work on Firefox. I have it as a passkey for GitHub, realized it doesnt work on Firefox, so they just prompt me for my password. That seems backwards to have password as a fallback, too.
I think that’s a you specific problem. Mine works fine with Firefox, and has for a good long while. Could anything be blocking it?
I just wish Google would stop overriding my passkey on Android for specific apps including their own.
You can change the provider to bitwarden.
On the contrary i want more services using passkeys instead of 2fa methods that are less secure (sms).
Passkeys are phishing resistant, or so they say… but the web app still needs to let you in with password + 2FA… So I’m not sure how much that’s really worth.
I guess if the users are typically never seeing a 2FA prompt then it should be more suspicious when they see one?
Passkeys are a replacement for passwords. Passwords don’t solve the problem of a lost password, and passkeys don’t solve the problem of a lost passkey. How a site deals with lost credentials is up to them. It doesn’t need to be password + 2FA.
Unless I’ve missed something big, passkeys are pretty easy for me if the website supports them imo.
Using KeePassXC, I click register on the website, register the passkey with KeePass, then it just works when I need to authenticate or login. My database is then synced across all my devices.
Passkey support is yet to come to KeePassDX on Android though, so I’ll be awaiting that feature
For me it’s just inconvenient to have to type my computer’s login, but the fingerprint on the phone is nice
If you live in the USA, don’t use fingerprints or any other biometrics. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/cops-can-force-suspect-to-unlock-phone-with-thumbprint-us-court-rules/
Passkey is “something you own” right?
I have something I own, it’s a Yubikey
I thought passkeys had to be behind biometrics, so “own” + “are”?
My primary and backup yubikeys: “Am I a joke to you?”
Of course, yubikeys implement passkey… Passkey is the new buzzword after lackluster success with the words used, webauthn…
and thank god for that, i’d been saying for years, webauthn is great tech which will never be adopted by normal people, because it had an awful name. luckily we were able to just call OATH TOTP “two factor authentication” or that would have been totally DOA too. I got big hopes for passkeys!
I have no idea what a passkey is and I will probably only learn what it is when they become mandatory
I will just use passwords + 2FA for the moment
Here is a demo you can try if you’re so inclined
I see, thanks. It mentions biometrics on that page. Maybe if my next laptop has a fingerprint reader then I should look into passkeys more.
I don’t use the biometric authentication on my laptop and am able to complete the demo on it. Chrome asks me for a PIN that I save and provide when it asks on my laptop. I don’t think biometrics are a requirement for passkeys.
Passkey is essentially a branding of webauthn. Instead of typing some code that changes, you just do something with some sort of device or key manager.
Plug in a yubikey and touch the button to authenticate. Easier.
