Passkey is some sort of specific unique key to a device allowing to use a pin on a device instead of the password. But which won’t work on another device.
Now I don’t know if that key can be stolen or not, or if it’s really more secure or not, as people have really unsecure pins.
Man, the amount of fearmongering and anti-Google rhetoric in this thread makes me sad. Passkeys are almost entirely a good thing and are supported by many big and small companies.
No, it won’t lock you into Google, it’s an open web standard. Google will have an Authenticator, Apple will, and third parties will spring up to support it as well. And there’s no lock in, you can get a new passkey when you want to switch devices or providers.
No, someone who gets access to your device can’t get access to everything if you have basic security hygeine. Secure your passkeys with a secondary password or use biometric authentication.
Yes, it’s almost a straight upgrade to text passwords. They are immune to phishing attacks and other social engineering tricks, and you don’t need to remember long strings of numbers and letters anymore.
Do your research people, sheesh.
This is starting to really get on my nerves, and I feel like discourse on the fediverse is worse; basically the attitude is that if it’s not FOSS and self-hosted, it’s shite. That attitude is fucking grating for the rest of us.
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This and if any business anywhere manages to reache a significant level of success — and has the nerve to charge money for their service — it’s a sign that capitalism doesn’t work and corporations are inherently evil.
I just assume it’s an age thing.
Big tech have done this to themselves
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Are you seriously arguing against HTTPS?
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HTTPS is definitely not a major reason the web turned corporate. It has its problems for sure though.
Look at Gemini if you want an example of a decent web ecosystem that has HTTPS as a requirement for the protocol.
Gemini benefits from two things that the web has lost:
The problem with passkeys is that surrender of a physical key is not protected by the 4th amendment and subject to seizure. From a security perspective, I agree that passkeys are good. But I only use a physical key as a secondary factor. Never a primary.
The courts have ruled that you can’t be forced to give up a password or passcode. (We’ll have to see if the current court will keep this precedent.)
Until we get better privacy protections, I’m not trusting passkeys whole cloth.
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If you replace passwords with passkeys that must be protected by a password, you haven’t replaced passwords, you’ve just moved where the attack can happen. While I think there’s certainly value in that, it’s very disingenuous to say you’ve replaced passwords.
Passkeys are used for more than web services and have the possibility to replace other security options elsewhere (being something you have, one of the three secrets possible). Their lack of protection, at least in the United States, is a very serious problem. Your points do nothing to address this and highlight just how bad the situation is.
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I missed the part where I said I don’t trust Google. You seemed to have ignored everything of substance in my response, namely putting a password on the passkey doesn’t remove passwords and the extension of things like FIDO2 beyond web auth.
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It doesn’t get rid of passwords, which is what I said when I said it was a disingenuous claim. It just moves the attack surface, like I said before. You haven’t bothered to demonstrate even a passable understanding of my original comment and the security issues I raised as a security professional because you appear to want to dunk on me. I’ve been having this conversation for years so sorry not interested.
That suggestion up thread to read up on how webauthn/CTAP2/FIDO2 works?
It’s a good suggestion. I would take it.
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There is no implementation right now that enables you to own and manage your own passkey backups without Google it icloud.
Additionally, the attestation feature is one step away from banks and other sites mandating specific implementations, preventing people from using software tokens or OSS managers.
Passkeys is great, and I am eager to recommend it to everyone, but without those items addressed, it’s a trap door, and one bitflip away from very strong lock in.
I just set my passkey up in Dashlane. It does not require Google or iCloud.
The same webauthn standard allows you to use a security key with PIN luck
My understanding is that, currently, a PIN or password is protected. So if you secure your phone with one of those, access to it is under 4th amendment protection. Given this, I’m curious how passkey legality would work out since it’s a physical key, but access to use it would still require a knowledge element.
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Google is a lot of things for a lot of reasons. This isn’t one of them. There’s plenty of reasons to bash them without needing to pull shit out of one’s ass