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Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

developer.apple.com

91–100 of 274 posts

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#91
post #81

Does anyone know if iOS devices support multiple users/bio metrics per device and could log a specific user in when they are using a shared device? I'm wondering if this could be used for a shared iPad on a factory floor to log users into their own account on our web app.

Since we are really talking about WebAuthn and not just the iOS implementation, You probably could use alternative hardware (maybe android based) that supports the multiple-user biometric use-case. From the server/web-app side it still would just be WebAuthn.

Looks like you use a separate device like this: https://www.ftsafe.com/Products/FIDO/Bio

That supports fido2, hooked to any tablet to make it work.

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#92
post #82

This really is just bringing WebAuthn to Safari. I've been using it via chrome w/ TouchID for our corporate okta SSO and it has been working great. WebAuthn is really just a way to make public-key/private-key crypto scale. The user never really knows about or interacts with the keys. The website doesn't store a password, they store a public key. The user doesn't know about the private key (paired to the public key) t…

How does this work if you need to sign in to a site on a borrowed computer while traveling or something? Is the private key derivable from a master password or something?

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#93
post #19

Interesting, Apple is letting you change your default web browser with this new iOS version, but also adding Face ID and Touch ID to Safari. Why would anyone want to build these features if they're so platform / browser specific? Does anyone know if these auth features might work on other browsers on iPhone?

There isn't a reason it wouldn't work - the browsers all use the same engine anyway.

This isn't really true any more. Apple requires their competitors' browser apps to use a 'webview' to display websites, and Safari does not use this. The iOS webview may share a layout/paint engine with Safari, but it is heavily restricted in other ways. Apps with webviews (like Chrome for iOS) can't have extensions, for example. But the subtlest, cleverest restriction is that webviews are forced to use an older and slower JavaScript engine. This ensures that websites feel a little slower in Apple's competitors' browsers. Another major upshot of this is non-Apple browsers can't offer the same modern JavaScript APIs to websites as Safari can. For example, last time I checked, 'getUserMedia' was not available on iOS outside Safari, meaning non-Apple browsers can't support web-based video conferencing tools like Jitsi. This also implies that websites running in non-Apple browsers won't necessarily have access to the APIs necessary request Face ID sign-in, unless Apple decides it is in their interests to make this available to webviews.

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some differences between Safari and WKWebView. Some features are blocked.

It's funny how much bashing Google gets for monopoly with Android, pushing users to use Chrome, Play Store and whatnot. While all of that is relevant, Apple's stranglehold seems much more and worse.

at least apple never pretended like iOS was open source

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#95
post #82

This really is just bringing WebAuthn to Safari. I've been using it via chrome w/ TouchID for our corporate okta SSO and it has been working great. WebAuthn is really just a way to make public-key/private-key crypto scale. The user never really knows about or interacts with the keys. The website doesn't store a password, they store a public key. The user doesn't know about the private key (paired to the public key) t…

How does this work if you need to sign in to a site on a borrowed computer while traveling or something? Is the private key derivable from a master password or something?

It's mentioned in the video as well that website should always use this as faster sign in option with providing other options alongside.

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#96
One of the reasons this is so important is that it makes it far harder to phish people. The webauthn APIs include the web origin in the authentication process, so it’s not possible to use something like modlishka to phish people. If we use magic links or something similar like a QR code for adding new devices, or more users also have roaming authenticators with PINs, webauthn will massively massively reduce phishing success where it’s implemented, as it’s pretty easy to make website that doesn’t have phishable credentials at all.

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#97
post #82

This really is just bringing WebAuthn to Safari. I've been using it via chrome w/ TouchID for our corporate okta SSO and it has been working great. WebAuthn is really just a way to make public-key/private-key crypto scale. The user never really knows about or interacts with the keys. The website doesn't store a password, they store a public key. The user doesn't know about the private key (paired to the public key) t…

How does this work if you need to sign in to a site on a borrowed computer while traveling or something? Is the private key derivable from a master password or something?

Similar to how you would sign in on devices/browsers without WebAuthn support or don't have physical token (Yubikey/etc.) with you: use a fallback method provided by a website. This is usually TOTP or a scratch code. The website need to implement it though.

One thing to keep in mind is this is not supposed to be the only factor required to sign in. It should be used as a 2nd factor in the similar way to TOTP (but with much better usability).

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#98

So roughly speaking this is WebAuthn for a web site, with the iphone acting as the dongle. It's a really good idea. I can see there being a big demand for just simplifying signin - I can easily see a time where it is worth not having the hassle of managing multiple signin processes and just choosing webauth or nothing. Edit: to be clear this won't affect B2C sites whose monetisation is based on getting as many people…

Webauthn actually fully supports this model as "platform authenticators", ie hardware security modules built into the client system. You see this on the windows side too where "Windows Hello" integrates with the TPM and acts as a platform authenticator as well. No need to speak roughly.

Yup. A site can even say "I want a platform authenticator" or "I specifically don't want a platform authenticator" during registration using the Javascript API.

Most sites should just not care, but it's an option if you've determined there's a specific reason it matters in your application.

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#99
Apple is considering this to be multi-factor authentication all in one click, the something you have (the phone) and the something you are (FaceID or TouchID). For the site perspective, if you ask for attestation then you will have cryptographic evidence of this. No more SMS 2FA!

Apple is promising to do something extra with their attestation process which they call "Apple Anonymous Attestation" to mitigate the issue where attestation allows tracking the same device across different websites even if they are using different usernames. Not included in the current release, but "coming soon".

The process of enrolling an authenticator is presented as a "one and done" event, but of course the devil is in the details. Shared accounts would need multiple authenticators, and what happens when you upgrade your phone or lose your phone? I guess this gets handled like a password reset. You probably will want users to be able to add/remove authenticators, which means also having to name them.

The enrollment process in this video highlights the upgrade path from a password login to a FaceID/TouchID login, but doesn't give us the UI flow of a new login. It seems like sites would need to implement a standard registration page and then perhaps swap out the password field with a Next button which would prompt for the FaceID/TouchID enrollment. Makes me wonder how does this compete with or tie into the 'Signin with Apple' if a site wants to offer one-click registration?

Will my Mac and iOS devices automatically and securely sync the private keys between their respective Secure Enclaves so that I can signin from any of my devices after enrolling on just one?

Lastly, how about the case when returning to a site where the user is on their enrolled device, but there isn't a cookie present. It looks like the site can detect that the device supports Webauthn, but I'm not sure if it can automatically detect that the device already has an account enrolled with the site?

The call to 'credentials.get' includes the 'credentialIdBuffer' which is a value provided by the platform authenticator and saved during registration. But in the video they make it sound like 'credentialIdBuffer' is actually optional? It's not even clear to me in the official WebAuthn spec [1] if this value is required, or if the authenticator will just use the RP domain to present the user a list of available credentials? Ultimately I'm wondering if a user without a cookie will still have to type in their username before the site can prompt them for FaceID/TouchID authentication.

[1] - https://w3c.github.io/webauthn/#dom-publickeycredentialreque...

Re: Face ID and Touch ID for the Web

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it never leaves your phone.

Yeah, and my personal data never left Equifax's servers either. You can't change your biometrics when they are inevitably hacked. If you even find out.

PDF page 8:

https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1902/en_US/app...

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