this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024
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“Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations to implement thanks to new initiatives the FIDO Alliance announced on Monday.

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[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I still have no idea how to use passkeys. It doesn't seem obvious to the average user.

I tried adding a passkey to an account, and all it does is cause a Firefox notification that says "touch your security key to continue with [website URL]". It is not clear what to do next.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

After my password manager auto filled a password and logged me in the website said "Tired of remembering passwords? Want to add a passkey?" I didn't know what it meant so I said no lol.

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 1 points 2 months ago

Me too, I don't trust the system and I don't want to be locked into a specific browser and/or device.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I think you actually have to buy a passkey device. Then configure it to work with a particular account.

You plug the passkey into your computer and then whenever it asks for a password you literally touch it and it does its thing. I think there are options like biometrics that you can add on top but you don't have to have that.

[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Devices themselves can act as passkeys too - I.e. your phone, laptop etc...

[–] xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

...except the ones that can't

I think it depends on whether you have a TPM chip in it

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What are you talking about? KeepassXC, to my knowledge, is not dependent on any TPM, snd it does support passkeys.

[–] xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone -4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

devices themselves can act as passkeys

I didn't say a device needs a TPM to support passkeys - I said I believe it it needs one to be a passkey

Thank you for your passive aggressive response caused by poor reading comprehension, though

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

From what I understand, "passkey" refers to software, so no such thing as "device being a passkey". Unlike a hardware key.

[–] xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You understand incorrectly. "passkey" refers to a token used for the public key authentication that is used for sign in, which needs to be stored somewhere - this can be stored in a hardware key like a YubiKey, or in your device's credentials manager. In principle, this could be anywhere, but it needs to be somewhere secure to not be trivial to compromise (eg taking out your HDD and just copying your passkey off it)

In Windows' case, this secure credentials store is the TPM chip, which is why you are not able to use passkeys on Windows devices that have no TPM chip (unless you use another hardware implementation).

Tldr: passkeys are data, not software, and to store the data, you need some form of hardware, which needs to be secure to not be a really bad idea.

If you'd like to do some reading before confidently correcting me further, I'd suggest reading about how passkeys work.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 2 points 2 months ago

That is exactly what I said though - passkeys are software. They're not confined to hardware modules, so there's no such thing as "device being a passkey".

[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks for clarifying

[–] NateNate60@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If that's what's needed, I can say with some certainty that adoption isn't going to be picking up any time this decade.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 2 months ago

They've been around forever as a concept I think I even have one for accessing some servers at work. You're right no one uses them.