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Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

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Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#31
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is confirmed in the "How does this work?" section. Your concern is addressed in the "Why is this important?" section. The key is definitely more secure against cracking than a password. It is more vulnerable to being physically stolen, but for most people, that is a lower risk.

I doubt that. Friends or family can't read your mind, but they can steal your physical key. People putting pins on their phones or password on their laptop are not afraid of being pirated. This is a vague, abstract threat to them. Becoming part of a botnet is really not important to them, and they getting their credit card stolen from the web is really not credible enough for non tech saavy user. What they are afraid…

Anyone in the world could crack your password. (Well, any of 2.5 billion people with an internet connection.) Requiring a physical key instead cuts the attack surface down quite a bit. If you can secure your car and house keys, you can secure this.

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#32
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the "nano" version available which is a lot smaller than the one advertised. The ones that I own have held up just fine for the past year on my keychain. https://www.yubico.com/product/yubikey-4-series/#yubikey-4-n...

This size is much better, but I assume it lacks the "touch" protection against remote attacks, like the other ones? I still wonder about the exposed connector - what its durability. After all, I would like for such a tool to serve me for years fault-free.

I personally have the nano version.

> but I assume it lacks the "touch" protection against remote attacks

It has the touch protection. There is a small strip of metal that protrudes beyond the USB port that you touch.

> what its durability

I've used it daily for about a year. Granted this is not "years" but so far it still feels very solid.

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#33
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passwords are utterly broken. All the entropy of memorizable passwords among humans have probably been extracted by this point. All they give you is a false sense of security. The password portion of 2FA is mostly theater, conditioned on the notion that passwords are broken. Hardware keys is the way of the future.

Except that passwords at least protect you if your hardware key is stolen. Using just a hardware key seems similarly risky to just using a password.

Exactly - It's similar reason to the crypto keys use passphrases.

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#34
post #22
post #2

Can someone remind me why we don't use public key cryptography for authentication on websites?

It looks like there's a W3C draft "in the works" but I'm concerned since almost half the editors work for the two companies trying to pass this proprietary Azure/AD vendor lock-in nonsense. https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/CR-webauthn-20180320

You may be comforted by the fact that the top three people on the Github contributor graph[1] are not from those two companies. I've skimmed some of the published meeting minutes[2], and JCJ (Mozilla) and JeffH (Paypal) seem to be highly involved.

[1]: https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/graphs/contributors

[2]: https://www.w3.org/blog/webauthn/2018/01/11/meeting-minutes-...

EDIT: add forgotten link

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#35
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the "nano" version available which is a lot smaller than the one advertised. The ones that I own have held up just fine for the past year on my keychain. https://www.yubico.com/product/yubikey-4-series/#yubikey-4-n...

This size is much better, but I assume it lacks the "touch" protection against remote attacks, like the other ones? I still wonder about the exposed connector - what its durability. After all, I would like for such a tool to serve me for years fault-free.

Forgive my ignorance, but could you explain what "touch" protection is please?

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#37
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passwords are utterly broken. All the entropy of memorizable passwords among humans have probably been extracted by this point. All they give you is a false sense of security. The password portion of 2FA is mostly theater, conditioned on the notion that passwords are broken. Hardware keys is the way of the future.

Except that passwords at least protect you if your hardware key is stolen. Using just a hardware key seems similarly risky to just using a password.

So in this case, arent the two factors a) physical possession of desktop/laptop and b) the Yubikey ? How likely is it you'll lose both if you keep your keyring with you?

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#38
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This size is much better, but I assume it lacks the "touch" protection against remote attacks, like the other ones? I still wonder about the exposed connector - what its durability. After all, I would like for such a tool to serve me for years fault-free.

Forgive my ignorance, but could you explain what "touch" protection is please?

In order for it to work you have to have it plugged in and touch it. Prevents a virus from talking to it unless it prompts you to touch it somehow.

Re: Yubico and Microsoft Introduce Passwordless Login

#40
post #17

Okay, so I have two Yubico U2F keys and two other U2F keys so far. I don't think I'll buy a fifth and sixth anytime soon. But hopefully U2F will actually work in non-Chrome browsers in the near future.

It already works in Firefox (behind a flag), but sadly some websites explicitly target Chrome...
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