I thought passkeys were supposed to be more secure?
They’re using the same standard as FIDO2 / WebAuthn hardware security keys. The protocol is phishing resistant, unlike TOTP and similar one time code solutions.
I prefer the physical ones, because they’re easy to organize. Passkey synchronization can be annoying.
I use passkeys through 1Password and it’s vastly less irritating to me than anything involving passwords, especially 2fa. I really don’t like having to wait for email to arrive or copying down digits from a text message, which seems to be how 2fa typically works 90% of the time.
The amount of people in this thread that don’t understand passkeys surprises me. This is Lemmy. Aren’t we the technical Linux nerds of the Internet?
The synchronization part is the annoying part. And when you have multiple accounts on one site you can end up with multiple passkeys for it.
It’s not for your security, it’s for the company’s. People suuuuuuuuck when it comes to credentials.
My company insists on expiring passwords every 28 days, and prevents reuse of the last 24 passwords. Passwords must be 14+ characters long, with forced minimum complexity requirements. All systems automatically lock or logout after 10 minutes of inactivity, so users are forced to type in their credentials frequently throughout the day.
Yes people suck with creating decent credentials, but it’s the company’s security policies breeding that behavior.
Same. They also don’t allow password managers and I have multiple systems that don’t use my main password, so I have at least 5-6 work passwords for different systems.
Nobody can remember all that.
So everyone makes the simplest password they can (since it has to be regularly typed in) and writes it down somewhere so they don’t forget it.
Coincidence or did you get that email from eBay today, too?
They probably got hacked and we’ll find out about it next year.
Passkeys are a great idea, but everyone involved seems like they want the process to be as much of a pain in the dick as possible. So until the industry pulls it’s collective head out of its collective ass (not going to hold my breath on that one), it’ll be passwords+2FA for me.
Jesus Christ, dude, that is exactly it.
We’re trying to implement passkeys at work and the testing has been an absolute nightmare. Literally have no control over the onboarding experience because each tech giant is clamoring over each other, interjecting into the process to be the “home” for your passkeys. It’s bananas.
When it’s all set up, it’s kinda great! But getting set up in the first place is an exercise in frustration.
I hate 2fa so much, I never thought they would come up with anything more irritating. Little did I know.
I really like 2FA as long as it’s TOTP and I can use an offline app or program for it. It just works and is very easy and secure.
It feels like everyone is trying to tie people to their platform. Oh, and also use the opportunity to force shit like “no custom ROMs or bootloader unlocking” on Android at the same time.
What’s wrong with passkeys? I’m in love with passwordless sign-in with yubikey, so much easier and faster than password + totp
It’s shitty user experience when forced to dig out my phone to authenticate myself to a site I barely give half a shit about.
Like I wouldn’t even have an account if it wasn’t forced, and now you assholes want my phone too?
I think you’re describing SMS passcode, totp or other such factors.
Passcode doesn’t require phone necessarily, but you can use it too
A lot of the stuff that has implemented passkeys so far are on mobile. And I mean the apps serving them out, not things you authenticate to.
BitWarden has a desktop extension and it also handles 2FA. No reason to be using a password, which is way less secure and can be extracted from a website DB via a hack.
Doesn’t the 2FA protect users still, if they only got the password?
It does, but not everyone sets up their 2fa, or uses the least secure forms. Then passwords get hacked, and those lists get shared so when the next hack comes along, they have that many more tools to try and break the encryption (assuming there is any) on a bigger site, compromising even more people.
It’s a whole systemic shit bag. Passkeys were meant to solve a lot of these problems, and they would, but Big Tech is botching the execution in favor of yet another thing locking you into their ecosystem.
In practice, yes. IF IMPLEMENTED PROPERLY it would be extremely unlikely for an attacker to get in.
For example with a proper implementation of TOTP it would require an attacker to guess the correct number between 1 and a million in less than a minute. Most services make you wait a little bit (often less than humans notice) between attempts and don’t allow infinite attempts, so an attacker would have to be unimaginably lucky.
There are sadly lots of huge companies that DON’T IMPLEMENT 2FA PROPERLY. Sony Entertainment (account for PlayStation) for example. So a unique and long password is still important.
TOTP can be phished remotely, passkeys / hardware security keys can’t (need to get malware into the users’ computer instead)
In store my passkeys in my password manager, which has a desktop app to access passkeys. What are you using that you have to always use your phone?
Google Chrome on PC can let you verify from the phone to unlock passkeys
Yes, extra security for your personal information is so irritating.
Security for who exactly?
If I don’t even want an account, it’s the “security” of the sites ad targeting data that IDGAF.
I don’t like how there isn’t a nice, cross-platform and secure way to sync my keys. Not all services allow multiple keys to exist at once.
Bitwarden syncs passkeys.
The syncing of keys allows for much greater attack surface.
Its being worked on right now but the standard hasn’t been finalized yet.
Until exporting and syncing keys is properly implemented, passkeys can go kick rocks.
I mean I’m just using my yubikey for the keys, it’s traveling in my pocket everywhere and use it on any platform
Until sites start disallowing youbikeys because it doesn’t make it impossible for you to backup your keys…
What is planned to happen.
Shouldn’t you still need 2fa, and use the passkey as the second auth?
The passkey is still protected with another factor, such as pin code or biometrics
Like when I login to my account, I put the yubikey to usb port, then browser asks me to unlock it using pin code, then I’ll touch the yubikey to confirm I’m in physical access to it, and only then it allows the authentication
In practice this takes about 2 seconds
Passkeys are light years ahead of 2fA in user experience. Why do you dislike them?
Security based on devices is one of the positive innovations of smartphones and perhaps the only area where they’ve improved over the desktop experience.
I very specifically don’t want my security tied to my device. Trying to migrate to new phones, and keeping things synced between a phone, desktop, and laptop is why I long ago moved to a password manager. Now, especially in the phone space, getting passkeys to function fully with a password manager ranges from “pain in the ass” to “not actually possible”.
Bitwarden: “I’m literally right here”
Bitwarden+Firefox+Android. That combo doesn’t support passkey creation.
I’m using Bitwarden, Firefox, and Android and passkeys have been working fine for me.
What am I doing wrong?
Ah, shit. Really? This is exactly my setup.
I had a botched phone battery replacement once resulting in the phone getting replaced very unexpectedly. It was a nightmare trying to get everything back together because I stupidly used google authenticator, which is tied to the specific phone it’s on. Not tying it to the device is the way to go.
I didn’t consider the friction of integrating it into your existing process because I use a manual password manager. But who is saying you should replace a password manager with passkeys? It was always meant to be a parallel system.
Edit: I just wanted to add that people like you and I who have “solved” our credentials problems are a tiny minority. Passwords are shit. Just because we’ve grown accustomed to them doesn’t change that.
Heard of so many people losing their phone. Then they try to log into something and the company (quite often google) says “I don’t give a fuck if you know your passwords I’m never letting you log into your account get fucked, don’t call I won’t answer”
Why would I want security based on a device? What security this offers greater than a 64 chars password + 2FA?
TOTP codes can be phished, hardware security keys and passkey can’t
Passkeys make plausible deniability more difficult. “This user name isn’t necessarily associated with my real world identity” permits some important good things.
Passkeys use unique keys per site for that reason
I briefly looked into passkeys a while ago, but I think I remember really disliking them because they just seemed like another excuse for companies to lock you in.
Has this changed? With Bitwarden + passwords, I can change to any platform, any device, at any time, and instantly get all my creds moved over securely.
I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m locked into using Android, Chrome, iOS, or whatever because I can’t move my creds.
Bitwarden has passkey support! Syncs too!
Yeah I don’t think it’s the only password manager that allows PassKeys either. Plus, they’re more secure by design; the website never has to store anything that can be reversed to allow access. Bitwarden even lets you store multiple passkeys per site.
I do hate how it’s promoted as “locked to your device” though but i imagine that’s because (unfortunately) password managers aren’t used by a majority of users.
Hm, ok. Maybe it’s time to take another look.
Amazon fucking insisting every damn time I log in.
