Do you people trust companies with passkeys?
I feel like big tech have started pushing for passkeys really hard lately. Microsoft has been asking me if I want to switch to passkeys pretty consistently. Google just automatically brings up the passkey registration fingerprint scan system dialogue every single time I’ve been signing in on Android. Without even asking if I want a passkey or not, it just does it without saying anything. I think the intention is pretty clear, an unknowing person sees the completely random fingerprint scan dialogue, doesn’t think much of it, scans their fingerprint, a passkey gets created automatically.
Well, I fell for their trick. I’ve been avoiding the passkey dialogue pretty consistently for a while now, but just now I was signing in while distracted and accidentally tapped my finger on the scanner by reflex on the prompt. I guess I have a passkey now. Yay.
I did some digging on my Google account settings and the internet, and I couldnt find a way to completely remove the passkey. It seems you can only disable the use of passkeys, but the passkey itself remains. There is also a setting called “Skip password when possible”, which is clearly what has been causing the non-stop passkey prompts. It’s on by default. It’s a shame I’m only aware of it now that its too late.
Theoretically, the passkey standart itself should be private and secure. Throughout the process, the biometric information used for the cryptographic challenges never leaves the device, and the server only gets access to a signature that has been signed with the client’s private keys that it can use to authenticate but can’t derive the private keys back from because of complicated math I didn’t spend enough energy to understand. Google automatically syncs the passkeys with its private keys with E2EE in the Google Password Manager tied to the account, which is where I start to get uncomfortable because I can’t bring myself to trust Google with E2EE.
What do you people think?
I’m afraid that they’ll become an “open standard” just like the web is an “open standard”. Controlled by Google, who has the most money and employees, and pushes out additions and changes to the standards so fast that Mozilla can’t keep up, and we end up with a web that caters to Chrome.
Imagine websites being like “oops, your KeePass database uses passkeys v7.8 but we now require passkeys v16.4”
As some people said here, you can just use a password manager or a physical security key (Yubikey, Nitrokey) to store the passkey. Absolutely nothing to worry about then. But either way I don’t see any reason to be concerned .
Look up how they work.
Passkeys are a major improvement over passwords. It’s crazy how many people here are afraid of everyday cryptography.
Not of cryptography but tracking.
What do passkeys allow someone to track that a password login wouldn’t?
Passkeys are a potentially good technology, that is frequently implemented in an insecure and user-hostile way.
Good: a standard way for authentication that can be implemented in common on client and server, such that the user doesn’t need to know a secret.
Bad: Most OS and platform vendors breathlessly implemented this standard using their proprietary APIs and making it practically infeasible (read: impossible for typical end-users, therefore they won’t, therefore insecure) to attempt syncing your passkeys outside their walled garden.
It is entirely feasible to implement passkeys in a way that users are in control and can freely move between devices and operating systems. But many implementations make that impossible, while still calling their implementation “passkey”.
So, we need to reject any implementation which puts any barrier to the user freely migrating and syncing all their devices regardless of platform.
I thought the whole point was that a passkey belonged to a device. You have multiple devices, you register multiple passkeys with your account. That way you can remove them if you lose a device. Doesn’t iOS go so far as to lock them in the TPM?
No, it’s the opposite. Apple argued strongly that passkeys are intended to be a replacement for passwords and so must be syncable. And that’s how it’s implemented on Apple OSes. It syncs to iCloud Keychain or your password manager, and so that same passkey is available on all your devices. It’s not even locked into Apple’s ecosystem because of cross-platform password managers.
For once I am with apple on this one. The bad thing about passwords is their randomness. Humans are not very good at remembering very big entropy
That’s my understanding as well
I use passkeys via KeepassXC (on Windows & Linux) and KeepassDX (Android), in which case Passkeys are essentially an upgrade:
- Since I use a password manager anyways, the difference in where they are stored is nil.
- As I use KeePass databases I remain in control.
- Auto-fill is in my experience more flaky than passkey prompts, though it would be nice if KeePassXC could be a native provider, like KeePassDX is on Android nowadays.
- Passkeys are generally more secure, as the key itself never leaves the device (only a challenge is performed to verify ownership of said key) unlike passwords. Passkeys also tend to be longer than passwords.
The only downside is that you need access to the database to login - unlike with passwords where it is cumbersome, but still reasonably possible to enter it manually.
I wouldn’t want my keys to be wholly linked to my device (problematic if I lose it, or it breaks) or be reliant on Google’s - or other big tech - password managers either.
Yeah, I trust them. I don’t think they want access to your credentials. They have the expertise to do E2EE properly. They don’t want to be humiliated in a DEF CON talk.
They’re pushing passkeys because passkeys are a massive improvement over passwords. They would be negligent not to be pushing passkeys.
They’re pushing passkeys because passkeys are a massive improvement over password
What’s the short technical explanation of them? Is it similar to ssh key auth?
passkeys can also be stored in your own password manager, but i still dont trust the process. i used to help out my dad in a countryside office, and they had a weird room halfway under the ground. this meant pleasant tempratures all year, but pisspoor internet for my phone. which meant the local totp generating was just perfect. since then i just only trust offline generated codes, biometric logins, long ass 20 character passwords, and the combination of these.