Can someone tell me why I should care about this rather than just continuing to use my password and 2FA?
I’m stealing this from another comment:
The main advantage comes with phishing resistance. Standard MFA (time based codes) is not phishing resistant. Users can be social engineered into giving up a password and MFA token. Other MFA types, such as pop up notifications, are susceptible to MFA fatigue. Similar to YubiKeys, Passkeys implement a phishing resistant MFA by storing an encryption key, along with requiring a biometric. The benefit here is that these are far easier for the average user, and the user does not need to carry a physical device. Sure, fingerprints could possibly be grabbed with physical presence, but there is far less risk that a users fingerprint is stolen, than a user being social engineered over the phone into giving creds. For most organizations and users, this is far more secure.
And, they are actually more convenient because then entire login process is one step with minimal keyboard input, rather than two.
What’s the backup login mechanism when you lose your biometric sensor? How do you pair with the new sensor?
You can still keep password + 2FA on GitHub and Google Suite (probably anything else that’s currently implementing them), it’s just a convenience/anti-phishing feature right now.
The passkey is synced between devices if it’s kept in a password manager, I haven’t looked at the mechanism that Apple uses to sync it/use it if you store it in the system keychain. I guess you could also have multiple passkeys configured for a few devices.
I kind of don’t like to store my fingerprints with Google. Even FBI collects them when you are indicted.
What about allowing us to log in to services via asymmetric keys?
You don’t have to store them with Google. Passkeys are supported in both iOS and Android natively. Within the last few months both Bitwarden and 1Password support storing passkeys as well.
It is just an asymmetric key. Phones try to store them securely but you could use an app to just generate them and store your key wherever.
Eh. The feds already have my fingerprints due to a background check…
From just now reading the Docs regarding passkeys.
The main draw seems to be that it is easy to sign in (just requiring biometrics for example) and mainly a lot more resistant to phishing.
It has its own pros. The biggest one is that it uses asymmetric cryptography. This means that the only one that can sign a challenge given by the server is the one that has the private key equivalent of the public key the challenge was used to be encrypted with. The challenge is sent to the client, in which the client signs the challenge the server sent with their private key and then sent back to the server. Since the server has the public key, the server can verify whether the signature is indeed from the private key owner. This is possible because the private and public key are mathematically linked. This is the reason why it is phish proof. Though I am not sure whether a phisher can just take the challenge, let the victim sign it and then give back the challenge to the server to login. Can anyone confirm that? They are not better than hardware keys (since they are basically software versions of physical hardware keys), but at least better than passwords. At least the breaches will impose much lesser risks when it becomes a standard.
They are not better than hardware keys (since they are basically software versions of physical hardware keys), but at least better than passwords.
That is not technically correct. Passkey is a protocol first and foremost, and the way it is implemented is up to the vendor. Can be software, eg. Apple, Google, Bitwarden, etc, but you can as well use a hardware key, eg. Yubikey has Passkey support for quite a while now.
The reason why I said that is because they are currently only stored in the cloud. It’s not like hardware and passkeys function differently. It’s just that a physical key (that you have) is more secure than having it on some companies computers.
