There’s been a lot of pain in the attempt to portray it as “Just click the passkey button, and that’s it! Your login is secured for life!”
No - Buddy. It is secured for this one specific device that I have biometric authentication for. What about my computer? What about my other computer that isn’t on the same operating system? I have a password manager that stores these things, why didn’t you save to that when I registered? Why is it trying to take this shit from my Apple Keychain when it’s in Bitwarden?
And, the next ultra-big step: How would a non-techie figure this shit out?
For some people it is that easy.
When it is saved to a cross-platform password manager, it is secured on all devices that password manager runs on including your computer on other operating systems. You can also choose other in the OS prompt & redirect to a device with your passkey or use a hardware security key (I don’t). If your preferred password manager isn’t the primary one on all your devices, then fix that or use the other option mentioned before.
How would a non-techie figure this shit out?
The same way they figure out passwords & multifactor. Their pain isn’t ours for those who’ve figured this out & have a smooth experience.
I mentioned Bitwarden in my comment, and my frustration specifically comes from occasions that I had Account X ready in Bitwarden, started up an app that relied on Account X, but loaded an HTML login page that had no discernable controls to use that Bitwarden passkey; expecting entirely for it to exist in my Apple keychain, which I never use.
I think it’s very easy to claim this specific app / account was not implementing passkeys well. But if that’s the case, how can I guarantee any other accounts I move over won’t fuck it up somewhere? I haven’t seen anyone get the concept of passwords wrong, and even if they don’t understand how managers work, I have control of the copy-paste function and can even type a password myself if needed.
And, the next ultra-big step: How would a non-techie figure this shit out?
They wouldn’t, because the people calling the shots in the tech world create UX with a focus on it sucking for everyone
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 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
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.
Interesting thanks. I will probably just stick with passwords + 2FA for the moment because I’m lazy. It would be cool to have something like a hardware key though.
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.
Ah okay. Maybe I will just stick with a password + 2FA for now though. I’m sure I will eventually learn more about passkeys when I make the effort to read more about them.
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 just wish Google would stop overriding my passkey on Android for specific apps including their own.
You can change the provider to bitwarden.
how to do that?
I do have it overridden but Google Play Services isn’t respecting my passkey default.
Passkeys are a great idea, but everyone involved seems like they want the process to be as much of a pain in the dick as possible. So until the industry pulls it’s collective head out of its collective ass (not going to hold my breath on that one), it’ll be passwords+2FA for me.
It feels like everyone is trying to tie people to their platform. Oh, and also use the opportunity to force shit like “no custom ROMs or bootloader unlocking” on Android at the same time.
Are custom ROMs or bootloader unlocking an issue for the passkey ecosystem? Not something I’d seen commented on yet.
You cant use it with grapheneOS, ive tried. I mainly use bitwarden for passkeys but some (most?) services only work with googles version
I hate 2fa so much, I never thought they would come up with anything more irritating. Little did I know.
I really like 2FA as long as it’s TOTP and I can use an offline app or program for it. It just works and is very easy and secure.
Until you lose the device with the 2fa app and can’t ever get into those accounts again. I’ve heard that horror story before and I avoid those apps because of it.
Lots of these apps let you export the entire vault as a file. I use this to import it on other devices. I currently have it on my phone (Aegis) and my pc (OTPClient) and is very satisfied with the experience.
I also have encrypted backups on a USB flash drive, an external HDD and five separate cloud services. I trust this solution.
Jesus Christ, dude, that is exactly it.
We’re trying to implement passkeys at work and the testing has been an absolute nightmare. Literally have no control over the onboarding experience because each tech giant is clamoring over each other, interjecting into the process to be the “home” for your passkeys. It’s bananas.
When it’s all set up, it’s kinda great! But getting set up in the first place is an exercise in frustration.
It’s a chance for them to lock you (normies) into their platform forever. They’re not going to give that up.
Has this energy…
What’s wrong with passkeys? I’m in love with passwordless sign-in with yubikey, so much easier and faster than password + totp
It’s shitty user experience when forced to dig out my phone to authenticate myself to a site I barely give half a shit about.
Like I wouldn’t even have an account if it wasn’t forced, and now you assholes want my phone too?
Yes, extra security for your personal information is so irritating.
Security for who exactly?
If I don’t even want an account, it’s the “security” of the sites ad targeting data that IDGAF.
I think you’re describing SMS passcode, totp or other such factors.
Passcode doesn’t require phone necessarily, but you can use it too
A lot of the stuff that has implemented passkeys so far are on mobile. And I mean the apps serving them out, not things you authenticate to.
BitWarden has a desktop extension and it also handles 2FA. No reason to be using a password, which is way less secure and can be extracted from a website DB via a hack.
Doesn’t the 2FA protect users still, if they only got the password?
In practice, yes. IF IMPLEMENTED PROPERLY it would be extremely unlikely for an attacker to get in.
For example with a proper implementation of TOTP it would require an attacker to guess the correct number between 0 and 999999 in less than half a minute. Most services make you wait a little bit (often less than humans notice) between attempts and don’t allow infinite attempts, so an attacker would have to be unimaginably lucky.
There are sadly lots of huge companies that DON’T IMPLEMENT 2FA PROPERLY. Sony Entertainment (account for PlayStation) for example. So a unique and long password is still important.
I don’t like how there isn’t a nice, cross-platform and secure way to sync my keys. Not all services allow multiple keys to exist at once.
The syncing of keys allows for much greater attack surface.
Its being worked on right now but the standard hasn’t been finalized yet.
Until exporting and syncing keys is properly implemented, passkeys can go kick rocks.
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
The amount of people in this thread that don’t understand passkeys surprises me. This is Lemmy. Aren’t we the technical Linux nerds of the Internet?
brb opening and feature request for passkeys in Lemmy
edit: nevermind
2FA is just dead simple. I contact you, you contact me, handshake achieved. If you call me out of the blue I raise the alarm. If you get a login attempt with a failed handshake you raise the alarm.
Putting it all behind a pop up screen just isn’t trustworthy to the human brain.
Passkey is multifactor: something the user has (key), something the user is (biometric) or knows (password) to unlock the key. Yes, dead simple.
TOTP 2FA is less secure than passkeys. 2FA TOTP keys can be phished. Passkey authentication cannot be phished. This is a security improvement which can make people completely immune to phishing attacks. That’s huge. And it doesn’t have any privacy risks, no loss of anonymity. It’s an open standard.
This is, objectively, a rare example of new technology which will make the world better and safer for us.
But I also worry about new areas of weakness with passkeys - anyone accessing the device with the passkey on it, or hacked that device, gets access automatically to the accounts. Also if logins are too fluid I worry that anything out of the ordinary during sign ins won’t be noticed.
yeah that’s totally true, but usually modern devices ensure that the passkeys are protected with a PIN or some biometric security, so I think it’s at least as strong as having a password manager on your device that can be unlocked with a PIN.
not really sure what you mean about “out of the ordinary” logins - it sounds like you’re thinking about phishing risks? but remember - passkeys cannot be phished. they verify the identity of both sides of the authentication token exchange - the server verifies you, and you verify the server. If you only use passkey authentication, you are safe from being phished. the most secure system would be one entirely without passwords/oath totp
I get that, the problem is human psychology.
everyone is sick and tired of tech promising to make the world better, only to make everything worse. i totally get the mistrust, the feeling that this is probanly just another trick from big corporations to steal even more of your privacy. i know much better than most people what it’s like. i know you’ve got no real reason to believe me, i’m just a random silly gay furry boy, but, trust me, in this case, we should be adopting this tech. if you’ve got family members or friends who are more vulnerable to phishing scams - often scammers target the elderly - i’d really encourage you to encourage them to set up passkeys. as always, i strongly recommend bitwarden - it can manage passkeys and sync them between devices and it’s totally secure and open source.
much love & solidarity!
2FA is great, right up until you’re also the victim of a sim swap attack.
2FA is not SMS. SMS is the least secure, shittiest, and simplest form of 2FA, designed as the bare minimum for the average chucklefuck. Everywhere implemented it hastily because the average idiot still uses the same password for everything. It should be illegal as the only form of 2FA, but our governments are run by criminally corrupt dinosaurs.
Fun story! Back in 2017 I tried to remove SMS 2FA entirely, and switch to a data only mobile service. I use 2FA everywhere it’s available, but was able replace SMS with TOTP everywhere except banks, even on big tech platforms where you could only activate TOTP after adding a mobile number and enabling SMS 2FA (you could then remove the mobile number). I ultimately had to keep the voice service because banks required SMS 2FA, with no alternatives beyond their own custom 2FA apps, that can only be registered by SMS. Almost a decade later I have more SMS 2FA than ever before.
The moral of the story is we live in a clown world capitalist dictatorship.
Text has always been insecure. An authenticator app is better.
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!
Passkeys are light years ahead of 2fA in user experience. Why do you dislike them?
Security based on devices is one of the positive innovations of smartphones and perhaps the only area where they’ve improved over the desktop experience.
I very specifically don’t want my security tied to my device. Trying to migrate to new phones, and keeping things synced between a phone, desktop, and laptop is why I long ago moved to a password manager. Now, especially in the phone space, getting passkeys to function fully with a password manager ranges from “pain in the ass” to “not actually possible”.
@IrateAnteater @yesman if they do the “show secret” or whatever the option is called when your 2FA setup shows a QR code then you can copy that plain-text and save it somewhere (safe!) to just plumb it in to whatever authenticator app you decide to use elsewhere.
If you use something like BitWarden then it can generate those 2FA codes for you and sync between whichever devices you use.Heard of so many people losing their phone. Then they try to log into something and the company (quite often google) says “I don’t give a fuck if you know your passwords I’m never letting you log into your account get fucked, don’t call I won’t answer”
I had a botched phone battery replacement once resulting in the phone getting replaced very unexpectedly. It was a nightmare trying to get everything back together because I stupidly used google authenticator, which is tied to the specific phone it’s on. Not tying it to the device is the way to go.
I didn’t consider the friction of integrating it into your existing process because I use a manual password manager. But who is saying you should replace a password manager with passkeys? It was always meant to be a parallel system.
Edit: I just wanted to add that people like you and I who have “solved” our credentials problems are a tiny minority. Passwords are shit. Just because we’ve grown accustomed to them doesn’t change that.
You’ll find that nobody has a problem with passkeys specifically. They have a problem with the implementation, and companies forcing passkeys onto users who don’t want or need them.
I don’t need passkeys because I use a password manager. My threat model requires that I can restore my password manager, all 2FA, and regain full access to all my accounts from anywhere in the world, even if a natural disaster occurs and all my devices are destroyed.
Passkeys and SMS 2FA are a direct threat to my threat model, and I can’t help but feel they’re designed to further entrench surveillance capitalism, and the invasion of privacy as a prerequisite for security.
Bitwarden: “I’m literally right here”
Bitwarden+Firefox+Android. That combo doesn’t support passkey creation.
Why would I want security based on a device? What security this offers greater than a 64 chars password + 2FA?
TOTP codes can be phished, hardware security keys and passkey can’t
I doubt that anyone that doesn’t use “password” as a password and who knows what 2FA is could be easily subject to phishing.
I’ll use banks as an example
If they cared about your security there would not be a 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.
Do you think signatures were at all secure? If they cared about security they’d do chip+pin like most civilized countries.
ITT: people who think only SMS, email and TOTP exist as 2FA.
And people who think only your phone can be used as passkey.
When those are the only options given by some services, yeh it kinda is. I’d love to be able to just use my flipper as a u2f for everything, but unfortunately most websites are all “no” and you have to use a chrome browser instead of Librewolf even when you could use a yubikey, so fine I guess text me, oh whoops I changed my number and I’m now locked out of my acct, cool.
