Live data from Hacker News

Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

blog.google

151–160 of 684 posts

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#151
I'm surprised that they're moving forward with this already. As of last week, there were still enough rough edges on their implementation that I disabled it for my Workspace tenants. The two most irritating:

1. Advanced protection doesn't yet support passkeys. You must keep U2F in place for now. 2. If you have a U2F key configured on your account, Google will prompt you to use it as a passkey before telling you that it's not a passkey and you must login with your password. The net result is that anyone using phishing resistant MFA loses the ability to have their MFA step "remembered" on a device because Google will always prompt for the U2F factor before the password.

This aside, I've been doing a lot of testing with FIDO2 flows using security keys and passkeys across device types and platforms in preparation to roll out passwordless via Okta with a couple of smaller clients. Overall, I love the authentication flow, but there are a lot of gotchas to keep in mind. We've spent a considerable amount of time mapping out the happy path, creating onboarding resources, and documenting business continuity scenarios. The personal use case is actually more of a challenge in some ways, because you need to think about each service rather than just one IdP.

FYI, the easy path right now if you need to support multiple environments is to invest in 1Password or another password manager that supports passkeys. This provides the most consistent user experience and works across most platforms, though we're still having trouble with Android 14.

We're sticking to hardware keys for highly privileged accounts, so admins get a pair of FIDO2 keys. Everyone else gets one Yubikey, which serves as a backup if they lose access to their devices or need to login on an untrusted device. Android is also a problem here. Even in 14, it doesn't seem to support passwordless FIDO2 flows.

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#152

Hottake here: The biggest mistake that the passkeys movement did is try to make it sound more marketable at the cost of oversimplification. First up, these aren’t really “no password” mechanisms. They’re closer to ssh certificates. You need to authenticate through some other mechanism and then agree to do the equivalent of creating and installing ssh certificates on your device. The ssh certificates get synchronized…

what if you sign up a new account somewhere with a passkey? Then, it's the primary authentication method, right?

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#153
post #3

[flagged]

The title triggers me by itself. The article is actually much less problematic.

Anyway, I guess the way people are reacting on the comments is overwhelmingly due to the language. And the fact that it doesn't even try to explain anything.

IMO, the author didn't really know the things the article is about and is writing about some 3rd party information.

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forced phone number 2FA has the same effect; in Big G's case forcing phone number 2FA is anti-anonymity disguised as security. It can actually be both; in fact it very likely needs to be: 1. Phone numbers are the best long-term identity most people have 2. Google has billions of users and needs to support account recovery at unbelievable scale 3. Many people lose passwords and devices, but very few lose phone numbe…

All of this is valid! But it would be even more secure if there was an opt-in "I don't want to use my phone as 2FA". Phone number authentication creates a weakness for anyone who is in a targeted attack. A motivated attacker can easily bribe/trick a telecom employee, or if physically accessible, swipe the phone itself to read 2FA texts.

Sign up for Google's Advanced Protection Program. It's been around since 2017, and last I checked, it's the only way to fully disable the use of your phone number for authentication.

https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#155

Isn't it obvious that logging in with your face or your fingerprint is less secure? Sure, it's convenient, but any thug can just forcefully unlock your device.

Can't the thug apply the 20$ wrench to your face until you say your password?

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#156

Hottake here: The biggest mistake that the passkeys movement did is try to make it sound more marketable at the cost of oversimplification. First up, these aren’t really “no password” mechanisms. They’re closer to ssh certificates. You need to authenticate through some other mechanism and then agree to do the equivalent of creating and installing ssh certificates on your device. The ssh certificates get synchronized…

HN crowd understands ssh certs and the difficulty of key exchange. Most others simply don't. So they need to simplify.

If the result is that users are not using passwords, then aren't passkeys an alternative to passwords?

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#157
post #13

As a user I still don't understand this. What happens if there's a house fire or something and all my devices where I'm logged in with Google break? How do I log into my account again?

I had a fire. I lost every single thing I own, except my landlord grabbed my phone, bless him. Otherwise I would have been totally stuck as all my TOTP apps are on there.

Also, never lose your phone number. I can't get back into my Google account even though I have the username, password and recovery email because I can never get the SMS code.

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#158
post #3

[flagged]

Except that Google and everyone else pushing passkeys have been publishing massive volumes of highly technical details about all of this for years.

You're looking at a non-technical blog post targeted towards the general public, and non technical journalists. Any technical details you want are just a search away.

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#159
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other businesses have humans on staff which will verify your identity documents. Google simply chooses not to do this, because it is expensive, and their "users" are not their customers.

They have offered this since 2017, in response to the Podesta email hack. It's free, but it's not the default, because traveling to a Google site is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of their users. https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection

Is there something there that explains how the recovery process is different? The only thing I see in the FAQ is somewhere that they link to the normal account recovery page, and say that you'd have to order another hardware token.

Re: Passkeys are now enabled by default for Google users

#160

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it fair to say that passkeys secured on your phone are more secure than 1FA (password) but less secure than "traditional" 2FA? Passkey 2FA: unlock your phone and the passkey on your phone can log you in. Traditional 2FA: remember a password AND unlock your phone (where your TOTP is stored) and you can login If I were to rate all 3 methods on a scale of 1 to 10, for convenience and se…

No, if you break into a site using passkeys, it gives you literally zero information that can be used to authenticate as any of the users. Think about the prevalence of data breaches in the past decade, and the sharp rise in the effectiveness of password stuffing, and think about why this change might be a good idea.

Also even with traditional 2FA, TOTP can be phished. See https://github.com/kgretzky/evilginx2

WebAuthn almost entirely eliminates phishing risk (at least with respect to credential harvesting), and Passkeys are a really nice, clean UX for using WebAuthn.

Post reply on HN