4mo ago

The War on Passwords Is One Step Closer to Being Over

www.wired.com The War on Passwords Is One Step Closer to Being Over

“Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations to implement thanks to new initiatives the FIDO Alliance announced on Monday.

“Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations to implement thanks to new initiatives the FIDO Alliance announced on Monday.

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129 comments

I still have no idea how to use passkeys. It doesn't seem obvious to the average user.
I tried adding a passkey to an account, and all it does is cause a Firefox notification that says "touch your security key to continue with [website URL]". It is not clear what to do next.
- After my password manager auto filled a password and logged me in the website said "Tired of remembering passwords? Want to add a passkey?" I didn't know what it meant so I said no lol.
  
  Me too, I don't trust the system and I don't want to be locked into a specific browser and/or device.
- I think you actually have to buy a passkey device. Then configure it to work with a particular account.
  You plug the passkey into your computer and then whenever it asks for a password you literally touch it and it does its thing. I think there are options like biometrics that you can add on top but you don't have to have that.
  
  Devices themselves can act as passkeys too - I.e. your phone, laptop etc...
  
  ...except the ones that can't
  I think it depends on whether you have a TPM chip in it
  
  What are you talking about? KeepassXC, to my knowledge, is not dependent on any TPM, snd it does support passkeys.
  
  devices themselves can act as passkeys
  I didn't say a device needs a TPM to support passkeys - I said I believe it it needs one to be a passkey
  Thank you for your passive aggressive response caused by poor reading comprehension, though
  
  From what I understand, "passkey" refers to software, so no such thing as "device being a passkey". Unlike a hardware key.
  
  You understand incorrectly. "passkey" refers to a token used for the public key authentication that is used for sign in, which needs to be stored somewhere - this can be stored in a hardware key like a YubiKey, or in your device's credentials manager. In principle, this could be anywhere, but it needs to be somewhere secure to not be trivial to compromise (eg taking out your HDD and just copying your passkey off it)
  In Windows' case, this secure credentials store is the TPM chip, which is why you are not able to use passkeys on Windows devices that have no TPM chip (unless you use another hardware implementation).
  Tldr: passkeys are data, not software, and to store the data, you need some form of hardware, which needs to be secure to not be a really bad idea.
  If you'd like to do some reading before confidently correcting me further, I'd suggest reading about how passkeys work.
  
  That is exactly what I said though - passkeys are software. They're not confined to hardware modules, so there's no such thing as "device being a passkey".
  
  Thanks for clarifying
  
  If that's what's needed, I can say with some certainty that adoption isn't going to be picking up any time this decade.
  
  They've been around forever as a concept I think I even have one for accessing some servers at work. You're right no one uses them.

129 comments