this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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“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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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

They are really satisfying when they work. I have been impressed by how well they work cross platform in the new bitwarden. It even worked from Android one time with a key made on windows! However, I dread when my mom tells me she needs help with an account and I can't do anything because the key is on her iOS Keychain I don't have access to

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I remember when Microsoft made a big deal about this on Windows and then their "implementation" was making the local signon a number PIN.

And not a proper separate auth operation lol. You either set up almost everything with the PIN or use a regular password, not both. Makes it useless on enterprise.

Realistically we should all be using a key/pass vault since that would make using passkeys much easier, but that's too complicated for the internet in ~~2004~~ 2024.

If it were me, I'd just issue everyone a yubikey.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

What separate auth operation is needed besides authenticating with the local device to unlock a passkey?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm lost on this - is this better than GPG?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

More usable for the average user and more supported by actual sites and services, so yes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does this require any 3rd party to work? I remember reading a blog, something about attesting the client, which was some big corpo like Google/Apple/Microsoft... that's not for this, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

While the defaults are typically to use what the browser or OS has for storage and sync of the passkeys, you can use other things.

Like KeePassXC:

https://keepassxc.org/blog/2024-03-10-2.7.7-released/

As for attestation to how the key is stored securely (like in a hardware key), Apple's implementation doesn't support it for iCloud ones, so any site that tries to require it wouldn't work for millions of people. That pretty much kills it except for managed environments (such as when a company provides a hardware key and wants to make sure that's the only thing that's used).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does it require an array of fucking containers and a flurry of webAPI calls? Then no.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

No it's actually pretty simple. No containers. Your passkeys can be managed in the browser (Google Passwords), by a plug-in like BitWarden, or in a third party hardware device like YubiKey.

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