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Passkeys for Infrastructure

goteleport.com

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#11
post #9

You can't use Passkeys on iOS without iCloud, and you can't get an Apple ID without a phone number, which frequently maps to real-world ID. This means that soon your logins will be tied to your ID.

Passkeys are just built on top of WebAuthn, which can also use generic platform authenticators such as touchid or windows hello, or fido authenticators like a yubikey.

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#13
post #2

This is exciting, I love that we're moving toward passkeys. When I tell non-devs that passwords will be going away in the years to come they almost can't understand what I'm saying. Like we've all lived this life of passwords for as long as we can remember so the idea of not getting having to click "Forgot my password" once a day is foreign to us. It's sort of like we've been gaslighted into thinking this is how it h…

The problem with passkeys IMO is they typically aren't portable between devices, and if they are, they will have some of the same problems as passwords. A long passphrase will probably have the same threat profile as a portable passkey, but with an easier implementation.

Passkeys (in the sense the article is referring to, which is to say FIDO2 passkeys) are explicitly portable between devices. And the difference is they're always unique per-site in a way that passwords are not necessarily.

It's possible to approach the security of passkeys if you always use unique passwords per-site (with e.g. a password manager) but you're still then vulnerable to phishing unlike with passkeys.

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#15

> I predict that 2023 will be the year of Passkeys. I remain unconvinced that Regular Users will find passkeys as necessary/useful as the rest of the industry does, especially older users. Will be interesting to see how pervasive passkeys become.

Pretty good point you address here. I've been working on passkeys for a while and from our experience most users find it pretty useful, as long as it's not named passkey. Most of them just think they've used Face ID to login to a website - but yes overall adoption will be interesting to see.

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#16
I think passkeys adoption will accelerate once bigger consumer-oriented players (e.g. AirBnb) introduce them to a wider audience. PayPal, eBay and Kayak made the right, slow steps, but once more of these larger players offer passkeys as login, we'll probably see them a lot more around smaller companies, too.

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#18

I wish SSO providers were able to hook into this Passkey mechanism. Instead of storing Passkeys in iCloud for sync instead we could store them at the SSO provider

you get a system where you can finally own your own identity and the first thought you have is to how to reaquire that dependency on a for-profit entity

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with passkeys IMO is they typically aren't portable between devices, and if they are, they will have some of the same problems as passwords. A long passphrase will probably have the same threat profile as a portable passkey, but with an easier implementation.

Passkeys (in the sense the article is referring to, which is to say FIDO2 passkeys) are explicitly portable between devices. And the difference is they're always unique per-site in a way that passwords are not necessarily. It's possible to approach the security of passkeys if you always use unique passwords per-site (with e.g. a password manager) but you're still then vulnerable to phishing unlike with passkeys.

[deleted]

Re: Passkeys for Infrastructure

#20
post #9

You can't use Passkeys on iOS without iCloud, and you can't get an Apple ID without a phone number, which frequently maps to real-world ID. This means that soon your logins will be tied to your ID.

If it's just WebAuthn under the hood, wouldn't discrete WebAuthn devices work as well? That is, separate security keys (USB or NFC), or WebAuthn directly in the browser of a smartphone using on-device cryptography. Or did Apple manage to helpfully extend this standard into something requiring iWhatever accounts?

I use a YubiKey as well as iOS everywhere I use WebAuthn (currently only for 2FA).

The only sites I don’t are the ones which don’t support more than 1 key.

I haven’t come across any websites that restrict it to just iOS. I’m not even sure it would be easy (without fingerprinting), because the browser usually handles verification (and gives options for security key and iOS).

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