Toward a Passwordless Future(privacyguides.org) |
Toward a Passwordless Future(privacyguides.org) |
If I use passkeys, I have to worry about my trusted devices being compromised. According to the article, “as long as you can remember your phone password, you can log in to your accounts.” That sounds like my password manager. The other benefits also sound like a combination of my password manager and privacy focus. I’m not saying this is bad; I just don’t see how it’s different from a security-conscious status quo.
From a user perspective, instead of trying to get the dang webform to autofill, I just smile for a second and become authenticated.
for now phone hacked = say goodbye to work,banking etc is not ideal yes but in the future where you can implant chips under skin??? now we talking
Passkeys are supported by my password manager of choice, in the OSs that I care about.
My second wish would be that passkeys should be as easy to work with as ssh keys. Somehow, they tend to be more complicated. Asking you if you want to use your phone or security key (when you have neither, you are using a password manager) and often failing to immediately detect your preferred method of storing them, defaulting to Google, Microsoft, or Apple's solutions.
Passwords are a perfectly fine single factor. Add more factors to get more security, in specific use cases where they make sense. Passkeys don't fill the use case that a single-factor like passwords do.
Password Managers are also perfectly fine when combined with multiple factors and attack mitigations (and are certainly no worse than Passkeys we have now, key access managed by a central piece of software/key control/authorization). They solve many different use cases without breaking others. They're customizable, and not overly-dependent on standards. They are a loosely-coupled interface. They can be synchronized for multiple device/site access. They can be upgraded to support an infinite amount of security mechanisms. They can be changed in backwards-compatible ways, and they don't force one-size-fits-all on anybody. They even support Passkeys without forcing you to use them (though of course lots of Passkey software ignores the fact that you might have a password manager, and forces you to use the browser's Passkey store or nothing).
You want to uniquely identify a device? Fingerprint it on login. Having a separate passkey per device isn't any better, because if the attacker can get the device fingerprint, they can also probably get the passkey, because they have access to the device. And password reset still has to be a thing, because we all lose devices, backup codes, etc, so it's not like there isn't an easier attack anyway.
How is the passkey that much better than client-side certificates from 15 years ago? That was abandoned because of all the problems around key management; and now you want to bring back key management?!
Please stop trying to solve a problem by creating more problems. This is all about use cases. Just let users, and companies, decide what use cases they'll support. Don't force everyone to use a crap solution just because it makes big corporations happy.
So, I think "not even needing email" is unlikely for foreseeable future, unless we find other ways to authenticate people reliably.
Also, the whole bloody thing with passwords is noxious. I don't want to login to your site, I just want to read some stuff.
I'm talking about normal users, without backups.
Parents who lost their child's photos and are like oh well.
Assuming a normal user doesn't use the same password everywhere (which means everyone already knows their password), the alternative is saving them. Lost password or lost passkey doesn't make much difference.
Computing literacy is low so people will just suffer the consequences.
For this reason, at the huge providers, when you enable 2FA (or Passkeys) you usually have to set up a recovery buddy account or something like it.
Getting a new sim card with the same number is easy, you just go to your mobile provider with your ID card, and you're done in five minutes.
I mean still... the article mentions a "single point of failure" as a bad thing with other methods, but forgets about it here.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/escrow-security-for...
The key thing to understand is that passkeys are not intended to be as secure as hardware tokens but to be more secure than traditional passwords with phishing-friendly MFA. That allows them to offer better recovery options but might not be good enough if you are the target of a serious actor.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/thnjjf/priva...
https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivacyGuides/comments/thnjjf/comme...
How?
What? Who wrote this?
My question to the people here is are passkeys actually the future? Or are they an over-hyped over-engineered being forced on everyone? I say this as someone not knowing much of passkeys. And I'm not a fan of the "holier than thou" feeling from people proselytizing passkeys. Take the public's / user's doubts seriously. You wouldn't break into someone's home and force them to get a different lock mechanism for their safe, or front door.
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Counter-points to "password bad"
> Password Overload
Use a password manager.
> Email Requirement
Passwords don't require email. Email is a used as user ID commonly. You can also use other mechanisms such as "store this long key in your records and if you forget your U+PW then use it for recovery".
> Single Point of Failure ... email acts as a one-stop shop for attackers looking to hack your accounts, either by getting into your email account itself or by sending you convincing password reset emails that send you to a phishing page ...
I agree. Solely having "what you know" info makes phishing possible.
> Service Provider Negligence
A weak argument that could be applied anywhere to "but I don't trust them to do the right thing". All we need is good U+PW auth libraries and clear education like https://thecopenhagenbook.com/. Give actually big fines for companies that have breaches, then magically security will get better.
> Human Error ... passwords rely on randomness to be secure, but they also rely on humans to generate them... Humans are very bad at generating random numbers
Use a password manager. This article reeks of a wannabe expert tone with the certainty, finality, and generality (I can speak confidently yet have an out because I used the word "most" or "possibly"!) of its claims.
> Imagine if every time you connected to a website with HTTPS, you had to come up with your own encryption key. Would that be a secure system?
I can't take the author seriously with these arguments. Put your big boy/girl pants on and use your brain, stop using hypothetical straw-mans to easily knock down.
Plug in the API key and now my app is grokified. or if I'm really wanting that classic experience, ask the free version of grok to spin up a react interface that uses the api key, and then plug in. Wow.
Or if really desperate, make a quick fake NPM package, ask rando dev to npm install it bc its not working with their FOSS project or whatever, say nvm it works now! And it exfiltrates the API key someone wants.
I'd never do any of this bc I'm a latter day saint, but maybe I would if I needed a key in a jiffy who even knows
Using something like KeepassXC puts you in charge of your own backups.
I’m sure we can all find people for whom one or the other would be preferable.
Isn't it lovely that the big players can do that...
and when Keepass or others want to do it, they are threatened in no uncertain terms with de-attestation? Members of the FIDO Consortium threatening KeePassXC and other open source tools with blocking for sharing "roaming keys", meanwhile "Oh, Apple wants to share keys via AirDrop? No problem", which is one of the concerns, that it's yet another "push users to Apple and Google's tool of choice".
> https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#iss...
"Users should be prevented from copying or sharing a private key".
Those of us who don't want the let Google, Apple, or Microsoft manage our passkeys (i.e. pledging our fealty to our lords) will be seen as fringe lunatics.
I'll keep my workflow of always visiting sites by typing the URL myself, using a password manager, and TOTP 2FA w/ the secrets saved offline on paper. At least until I'm not allowed to do that anymore.
Some countries have problems with people and IDs, like US, so that's a different story.
The key here is thinking about relative risk: many people get compromised by reusing passwords or being phished every day compared to the number of people who simultaneously lose all of their devices and recovery codes.
The fallback path here is what you’d do with any other MFA loss. It’s not a federated login system so you’d be looking at some kind of account recovery process for each of the sites where you used your passkey, just like you would if you lost a Yubikey or changed phone numbers.
Which, in many cases, is avoid MFA because it's less secure. Yes, less secure because availability is part of security.
And I don't have a better plan to store all those recovery codes than to store all those passwords. So the attacker can still get in with the same effort, but I have to keep getting my phone. No thank you.
This is too often forgotten. Availability is a fundamental part of security and must be part of every threat model.
And your threat model needs to be matched with what it is being protected. One size does not fit all.
For example to log in to my brokerage account, I may be ok with a solution where I might lock myself out and have to go to a physical branch to restore access. Because while that would be a pain, it's better than having my life savings stolen.
But to log in to, say, facebook? Availability and convenience is #1 above all, it's just cat videos and other extremely low value stuff so it's not worth any inconvenience.
If you have two password managers then they can serve as backups for each other. Unfortunately that means you have to register each account twice.