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Passkeys aren’t a full replacement in my opinion, which is what DHH gets wrong. It’s a secure, user-friendly alternative to password+MFA. If the device doesn’t have a passkey set up you revert to password+MFA.
And the fewer times that people are entering their password or email/SMS-based 2FA codes because they’re using passkeys, the less of an opportunity there is to be phished, even if the older authentication methods are still usable on the account.
I am very shitty on security (I would not write this reply on a post on the cybersecurity community), and I resisted MFA for several years as being too annoying having to login to mail/SMS. After finding open source apps supporting TOTP, I feel better about it and I manually do the syncing by just transferring the secrets between my devices offline.
Passkeys are another foreign thing that I think I will get used to eventually, but for now there are too many holes in support, too much vendor lock-in (which was my main distaste for MFA, I didn’t want MS or Google Authenticator), and cumbersome (when email and SMS were the only options for MFA, difficulty of portability for passkeys).
So the problems you have with them are already solved, in the exact same ways they were solved for password/MFA. If you let Apple manage everything for you, it doesn’t matter whether you’re using passwords or passkeys, you’re locked in either way. But you always have the option to manage your passkeys manually (just like you’re doing with your TOTP) or using a third party cross-platform solution that allows for passkey import and export.
I wish all sites using 2FA would just support hardware keys instead of authenticator apps. It’s so much easier to login to a site by just plugging in my hardware key and tapping its button, than going to my authenticator app and typing over some code within a certain time.
It’s even sinpler than email 2fa or sms 2fa or vendor app 2fa.
For authenticator app you also can’t easily add more devices unless you share the database which is bad for security. For hardware security key you can just add the key as an additional 2fa, if the site allows it.
Agreed, my main issues with hardware keys are that so few sites support them, and the OS support is kinda bad like in Windows the window pops up underneath everything and sometimes requires a pin entered.
I also hate that when I last looked nobody made a key that supports USB-C, USB-A, and NFC. So now I’ve got an awkward adapter I need to carry on my keychain.
Yeah it’s truly a shame almost no site other than google and github support hardware security keys.
For your case you would probably want a yubikey 5c and then a usb c to usb a adapter yeah. I wish for a usb a and c and nfc as well.
I’ve got one each of the USB-C and USB-A versions. The USB-A is actually the one that lives on my keychain as the connector is more robust against debris and I was able to find an adapter that is on a lanyard.
DHH with a pants-on-head stupid argument just because he hates the big players in tech? Must be a day ending in Y again.
Passkeys are also weirdly complex for the end user too, you can’t just share passkey between your devices like you can with a password, there’s very little to no documentation about what you do if you lose access to the passkeys too.
The only way I ever used passkeys is with bitwarden, and there you are sharing them between all bitwarden clients.
From my very limited experience, pass key allows to login faster and more reliable compared to letting bitwarden enter passwords and 2fa keys into the forms, but I still have the password and 2fa key stored in bitwarden as a backup in case passkey breaks.
To me, hardware tokens or passkeys are not there to replace passwords, but to offer a faster and more convenient login alternative. I do not want to rely on specific hardware (hardware token, mobile phone, etc.), because those can get stolen or lost.
Interesting, maybe I’ll give it a try. I didn’t know they could just be synced between devices on bitwarden.
+1 for Bitwarden. Seamless experience so far. EBay hasn’t yet worked properly, but GitHub does for sure. It’s very convenient, especially if your browser doesn’t store cookies
you can’t just share passkey between your devices like you can with a password
You would just sign into your password manager or browser on both devices and have access to them?
Additionally, whatever app or service you’re storing them in can provide sharing features, like how Apple allows you to share them with groups or via AirDrop.
there’s very little to no documentation about what you do if you lose access to the passkeys too.
If you lose your password, there are recovery options available on almost all accounts. Nothing about passkeys means the normal account recovery processes no longer apply.
You would just sign into your password manager or browser on both devices and have access to them?
Does it work like that? Everything I see says they’re tied to that device.
If you lose your password, there are recovery options available on almost all accounts.
Fair, I guess I’ve never lost a password because it’s just a text string in my PW manager, not some auth process that can fail if things don’t work just right.
Does it work like that? Everything I see says they’re tied to that device.
It depends on what kind you want to use. If you want the most security, you can store them on something like a Yubikey, with it only being on that device and not exportable. If you get a new device, you’ll need to add that new device to your accounts. For less security but more convenience, you can have them stored in a password manager that can be synced to some service (self-hosted or in the cloud) or has a database file that can be copied.
Fair, I guess I’ve never lost a password because it’s just a text string in my PW manager, not some auth process that can fail if things don’t work just right.
That’s fair. It can be a bit of a mess with different browser, OS, and password manager support and their interactions but it has continued to get better as there is more adoption and development.
I’m excited to see where it is in another year or so, the idea of using public/private keys for logins is neat for sure.
Any of the multi-platform password managers that support pass keys will solve this.
You walk into the vault on every platform and your pass keys are magically shared between every platform you’re logged into.
In any system that I’ve used pass keys for (which is every system that supports them), you can go into the password section and delete devices/passkeys.
To regenerate new passkeys they either support it directly in the spot where you deleted it or you log out log back in with username password and 2FA and it asks you again if you want to set up a passkey. I’ve not run into anything else.
you can’t just share passkey between your devices like you can with a password
Either you enroll a system that shares them between devices without the need for special interaction (password manager, iCloud etc) or you enroll each device separately into your account.
You can have more than one passkey for a service. This is a good thing.
Gotcha, that makes more sense when explained that way!
I think that passkeys are simple, but no-one explains what they do and don’t do in specific terms.
Someone compared it to generating private/public key pairs on each device you set up, which helps me a bit, but I recently set up a passkey on a new laptop when offered and it seemed to replace the option to use my phone as a passkey for the same site (which had worked), and was asking me to scan a QR code with my phone to set it up again.
So I don’t know what went on behind the scenes there at all.
The passkey on your phone stopped working when you set one up on your laptop? I would expect the site to allow one per device instead of one per account.
Some sites only allow one public key per account…
Which is really stupid of them but technically within spec currently.
It seemed that way, it asked me to scan a QR code on my phone to link it, which didn’t happen before.
Or maybe the option to use my phone was some older auth method, where I’d use the fingerprint reader on the phone to confirm a login on the laptop. I thought that was a passkey, but that doesn’t fit with what I’m reading about what it does now.
For me, I’d prefer that everyone just adds biometric authentication techniques. A couple websites do this already and it’s great. Many devices have biometrics built in already and if this was widespread I’d certainly have no problem buying a fingerprint reader for my desktop computer.
Question - what do you do when the site is hacked and your biometrics are compromised? Issue new ones?
You don’t have interchangeable fingerprints? Keep up with the times /s
The password still works.
That’s literally a passkey.
You do realize that your biometric authentication techniques don’t actually send your biometrics (e.g. fingerprint/face) to the website you’re using and that you are actually just registering your device and storing a private key? Your biometrics are used to authenticate with your local device and unlock a locally-stored private key.
That private key is essentially what passkeys are doing, storing a private key either in a password manager or locally on device backed by some security hardware (e.g. TPM, secure enclave, hardware-backed keystore).
Sure I knew that. I just didn’t know if that was a “passkey” or some other private key mechanism.
I have never understood the goal of passkeys. Skipping 2FA seems like a security issue and storing passkeys in my password manager is like storing 2FA keys on it: the whole point is that I should check on 2 devices, and my phone is probably the most secure of them all.
It’s not skipping MFA cos some media can provide more than one factor.
E.g. YubiKey 5 (presence of the device) + PIN (knowledge of some credentials) = 2 factors
Or YubiKey Bio (presence of the device) + fingerprint (biological proof of ownership) = 2 factors
And actually unless you use one password manager database for passwords, another one for OTPs, and never unlock them together on the same machine, it’s not MFA but 1FA. Cos if you have them all at one place, you can only provide one factor (knowledge of the manager password, unless you program an FPGA to simulate a write only store or something).
It feels like the goal is to get you married to one platform, and the big players are happy for that to be them. As someone who’s used Keepass for over a decade, the whole thing seems less flexible than my janky open source setup, and certainly worse than a paid/for profit solution like bitwarden.
OTP in the password manager Private key pkcs#12 in a contactless smart card plus maybe a pin if I’m feeling fancy
That was my take too.
Security training was something you know, and something you have.
You know your password, and you have a device that can receive another way to authorize. So you can lose one and not be compromised.
Passkeys just skip that “something you have”. So you lose your password manager, and they have both?
I think you mean that passkeys potentially skip the something you know. The something you have is the private key for the passkey (however it’s stored, in hardware or in software, etc). Unlocking access to that private key is done on the local device such as through a PIN/password or biometrics and gives you the second factor of something you know or something you are. If you have your password manager vault set to automatically unlock on your device for example, then that skips the something you know part.
I love storing 2FA in the password manager, and I use a separate 2FA to unlock the password manager
I imagine you keep your password manager unlocked, or as not requiring 2FA on trusted devices then? Re entering 2FA each session is annoying
You still have the treat of viruses or similar. If someone gets access on your device while the password manager is unlocked (ex: some trojan on your computer), you’re completely cooked. If anything it makes it worse than not having 2FA at all.
If you can access your password manager without using 2FA on your phone and have the built in phone biometrics to open it like phone pin, finger or face, someone stealing your phone can do some damage. (Well, the same stands for a regular 2FA app, but meh, I just don’t see an improvement)
I went to see HR a month ago and they had a post-it of their password for their password manager. We use passkeys too.
And this was after security training.
😵 some people just don’t care
It’s their job though, not their personal life, so they might care less
If your secrets enter your clipboard, they are no longer secrets
I find phones the least secure devices simply because of how likely they are to be damaged or stolen
More than that. You probably use them in public, where there are tons of cameras. So if you forget you phone in say a restaurant, odds are they have video of you unlocking it.
And let’s not forget all the poorly secured wifi access points people commonly connect to…
Fuck DHH
I disagree with most of those arguments in the article… Additionally, there is nearly no passkey using service that does require you to still have PW and 2FA login active even if you use passkeys
We are right now in the learning/testing phase. It is not a flip and suddenly only passkey work. Transition to passkey only will be a very long time, like it was for 2FA, like, my girlfriend has it on, only at about 2 services, lol.
The main problem I have is, that people without knowledge get grabbed into walled gardens using passkeys. People with knowledge know that you can use alternative apps for passkeys, like proton or strongbox (keepass).
Whenever I read an article about security (and read the comments, even here on Lemmy) I’m constantly frustrated and depressed by a couple of things.
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Corporations making things shittier with the intention of locking customers in to their stupid proprietary ecosystem. And of course, they are always seeking more data harvesting. Security itself is way down the list of their priories, if it’s even there at all.
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Users being lazy trend-followers who quickly sacrifice their security on the altar of convenience and whatever shiny new FOMO thing is offered up for “better security”.
It’s a very bad combination. Doing security right is a bit inconvenient (which users hate) and expensive (which corporations hate).
You would be less constantly frustrated and depressed if you learned a little bit about security, instead of getting upset about imagined problems with technology you don’t understand.
I’m not against passkeys. They have some real advantages. And I understand more than you think.
My comment is primarily about the preferred ecosystems that tend to come along with these newer solutions (like Apple’s iCloud or Google’s Password Manager) and how the corporations take advantage of user laziness and bandwagon jumping.
They may not force you to be exclusive with them, but they definitely want you to be. And over time they will likely make it more and more inconvenient not to be locked in with them.
For contrast, I use BitWarden for password management and Bitwarden Authenticator for TOTP (and I keep safe copies of TOTP secret keys elsewhere). This is a generic open-standards-first approach to things, with relatively easy recovery should you lose something. You can export your passwords. You have copies of your secret keys. You are in no way locked in to BitWarden forever.
Passkeys can also work within that type of operational framework! Like TOTP which normally uses RFC6238, Passkeys tend to use CTAP or WebAuthn. All of the above are open standards. And this is a good thing!
But do you really think Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc, want to play nice long term? Hopefully they will. But I have also run into evil nonsense like LastPass, which even though they also used open standards, their software would not allow you to do simple things like recover your own secret keys, export your data, etc. (Not to mention the embarrassing security breach they had and the wretched response, the main reasons to dump them).
While I am not directly comparing an idiot company like GoTo Tech with Apple et al, they all have the same types of big brain MBA types working for them who love to constantly brainstorm new ideas on how to screw the users over by taking features away and calling it a “software upgrade”.
So, passkeys as a security mechanism: sure, this gets my vote. But trusting the big corporations not to change the rules on us later…come on, get real. They love limiting or removing portability and recovery options whenever they can.
Bottom line: don’t assume passkeys are inherently good or bad. It’s simply a security standard that can work well if implemented correctly. Passkeys make logging in easier. But will they also make recovery / export / migration easier…? Because if it’s not easy, people won’t do it.
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I just wish that companies enabling passkeys would still allow password+MFA. There are several sites that, when you enable passkeys, lock you out of MFA for devices that lack a biometric second factor of authentication. I’d love to use passkeys + biometrics otherwise, since I’ve often felt that the auth problem would be best solved with asymmetric cryptography.
EDIT: I meant to say “would still allow passkeys+MFA.” hooray for sleep deprivation lol.
If companies still allowed you to login via password then any benefit you get from Passkeys would be null and void. In order to implement passkeys properly you have to disable password authentication.
The thing is it’s then on you to secure your passkey with biometrics or a password or whatever you prefer. Your phone most likely will use biometrics by default. If you’re on Mac or PC you’ll need to buy a thumbprint scanner or use camera-based window hello / secure enclave
I just don’t get why I can’t use something like TOTP from my phone or a key fob when logging in with a passkey from my desktop. Why does my second factor have to be an on-device biometrically protected keystore? The sites I’m thinking of currently support TOTP when using passwords, so why can’t they support the same thing when using passkeys? I don’t want to place all my trust in the security of my keystore. I like that I have to unlock my phone to get a TOTP. Someone would have to compromise my local keystore and my phone, which makes it a better second factor in my opinion.
EDIT: like, at work, I ssh to servers all over the damn place using an ssh key. I have to get to those servers through a jump box that requires me to unlock my phone and provide a biometric second factor before it will allow me through. That’s asymmetric cryptography + a second factor of authentication that’s still effective even if someone has compromised my machine and has direct access to my private key. That’s what I want from passkeys.
I have to get to those servers through a jump box that requires me to unlock my phone and provide a biometric second factor before it will allow me through.
That is also the case with passkeys, if you so choose. Though they are functionally similar to your SSH key, they don’t just allow you to utilize the key just by having it loaded onto your device. When you go to use a passkey you need to authenticate your key upon use, and you can do that biometrically. For example let’s say I have a passkey on my phone which is currently unlocked and in use. If somebody runs over and steals the phone from my hand and prevents it from locking, and then attempts to authenticate to a site using my passkey, they won’t be able to.
Right, but I can’t require a second factor on a different device that operates outside of my primary device’s trust store. I’m sure there is some way to make my desktop hit my phone up directly and ask for fingerprint auth before unlocking the local keystore, but that still depends on the security of my device and my trust store. I don’t want the second factor to be totally locked to the device I’m running on. I want the server to say, “oh, cool, here’s this passkey. It looks good, but we also need a TOTP from you before you can log in,” or “loving the passkey, but I also need you to respond to the push notification we just sent to a different device and prove your identity biometrically over there.” I don’t want my second factor to be on the same device as my primary factor. I don’t know why a passkey (potentially protected by local biometric auth) + a separate server-required second factor (TOTP or push notification to a different device or something) isn’t an option.
EDIT: I could make it so a fingerprint would decrypt my SSH key rather than what I have now (i.e. a password). That would effectively be the same number of factors as you’re describing for a passkey, and it would not be good enough for my organization’s security model, nor would it be good enough for me.
I mean you don’t have to authenticate your passkey with biometrics, you can use a password.
I guess I’m not really picking up on what the benefit is you’re going for. You already have a What You Have and a What You Know or What You Are, and you want a second What You Also Have thrown in there. I mean, I guess having that as an option couldn’t hurt. but I also don’t think it’s really necessary.
Passkeys are already more secure than what you’re doing now. If what you’re aiming for is for them to be even more secure than that, then that’s an admirable goal. But as of right now they are worth it just for the fact that they’re more secure than existing solutions.
With a password manager I’d argue its better but supports still not all there yet. I am waiting on bitwarden right now to support mull, basically its blacklisted, but it was added in the last 2 weeks so now its a waiting game.
All the major password managers store passkeys now. I have every passkey I’ve been able to make stored in Bitwarden, and they’re accessible on all my devices.
Article is behind the times, and this dude was wrong to “rip out” passkeys as an option.
If a password manager stores passkeys, how is that much different than just using a password manager with passwords?
Storing passwords in a password manager is storing a shared secret where you can only control the security on your end and thus is still vulnerable to theft in a breach, negligence on the part of the party you’ve shared it with, phishing, man in the middle potentially, etc.
Storing a passkey in a password manager on the other hand is storing an unshared secret that nobody but you has access to, doesn’t leave your device during use, is highly phishing resistant, can’t be mishandled by the sites you use it to connect to etc.
Can you elaborate a bit more? If I create a passkey on https://passkeys.io on my Mac, then store the passkey in a password manager like Bitwarden, I can log into that site on my phone. I was kinda under the impression that Bitwarden stored the private key on their servers, so if their site gets hacked, then the attacker has access to my passkey.io account?
Bitwarden stores your passkeys on your local device. It can sync the passkey between devices but that’s end to end encrypted, bitwarden never has access to any of your passkeys or even your passwords.
Your vault is encrypted on your device before it’s sent to Bitwarden’s servers, so even they don’t have access to your passwords and passkeys.
More info on how it is encrypted is here:
https://bitwarden.com/help/what-encryption-is-used/
Pretty much every password manager works like this. Having access to your data would be a liability for them.
I need to sync my passkeys between all my devices–which really means I need keepass to store the private keys in its DB so I can sync it with all the other keepass-compatible apps I use in various places. Last I looked, this wasn’t solved, but it’s been a minute. I’m certainly not using a centralized password manager unless they all can freely import and export from one another. I understand this is a “being worked on” problem.
So someday, yes.
Isn’t the sync for keepass-compatible apps just syncing a normal file?
Yes, it is. I just need to know that the passkeys are in that file and that all the apps I use to read that file support them.
That’s a typical DHH article, essentially. He has some interesting insights, but everything else is borderline cult-leader opinions, and some people follow it as gospel
I feel like if DHH hadn’t picked Ruby on Rails it and standalone Ruby would be much more popular today.
Why does anyone still give a fuck what DHH has to say any more?
Rails is a ghetto has been a thing for over a decade, and the man is basically just a tech contrarian at this point.
Whatever way the world is moving, expect DHH to have a different opinion about it.
Random email auth is some thought leadering for sure.
