Attackers were able to compromise 23andMe over five months beginning April 2023, enabling access to 5.5 million DNA Relatives profiles and details from 1.4 million users of the Family Tree feature, said the company in a disclosure in October.
Agree that passkeys are the direction we seem to be headed, much to my chagrin.
I agree with the technical advantages. Where passkeys make me uneasy is when considering their disadvantages, which I see primarily as:
Lack of user support for disaster recovery - let’s say you have a single smartphone with your passkeys and it falls off a bridge. You’d like to replace it but you can’t access any of your accounts because your passkey is tied to your phone. Now you’re basically locked out of the internet until you’re able to set up a new phone and sufficiently validate your identity with your identity provider and get a new passkey.
Consolidating access to one’s digital life to a small subset of identity providers. Most users will probably allow Apple/Google/etc to become the single gatekeeper to their digital identity. I know this isn’t a requirement of the technology, but I’ve interacted with users for long enough to see where this is headed. What’s the recourse for when someone uses social engineering to reset your passkey and an attacker is then able to fully assume your identity across a wide array of sites?
What does liability look like if your identity provider is coerced into sharing your passkey? In the past this would only provide access to a single account, but with passkeys it could open the door to a collection of your personal info.
There’s no silver bullet for the authentication problem, and I don’t think the passkey is an exception. What the passkey does provide is relief from credential stuffing, and I’m certain that consumer-facing websites see that as a massive advantage so I expect that eventually passwords will be relegated to the tomes of history, though it will likely be quite a slow process.
We’ll its a private key, so just a few kb of data. You can likely put it on all sorts of devices. Most services that use it will require some of the above, so I doubt the usefulness, but the same goes for most passwords.
Im curious how you access your passwords with the above criteria. Are you using a notepad with dozens/hundreds of unique passwords, some kind of dice based randomizer, or just a few passwords for many sites?
That’s literally just a long password that you can never recover your data from when you inevitably lose or forget it (remember we’re talking about the majority of users here who do not use password managers).
there’s literally zero technical reason that a user couldn’t reset a private key the same as a password. after all, you just pointed out they are almost the same.
edit: if you’d like to see an example create SSH keys for your GitHub account and then reset them
I assumed you were talking about a private key as in cryptographic private key, where your data is encrypted on the remote server and your private key is required for it to be decrypted and for you to use it.
If you just talking about something to get into an SSH key then all that is is a longer password.
not at all. are you expected to remember it? would it even be possible to memorize for most? not even close to the same thing, passwords have very low entropy which causes all their problems
secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user’s identity
A secret key or passcode meets that definition 🤦 You’re most definitely on poor standing here.
A very long password that no one can remember (ie. A key) is still a password. Also are you unaware of the existence of password managers and random password generation…?
What is your suggestion for a superior solution to the problems passwords solve?
Passkeys are becoming the industry standard. They are better in nearly every way, but would not have been possible before smartphones.
They are unique for each site, not breachable without also having a users device, not phishable, and can’t be weak by design.
Agree that passkeys are the direction we seem to be headed, much to my chagrin.
I agree with the technical advantages. Where passkeys make me uneasy is when considering their disadvantages, which I see primarily as:
There’s no silver bullet for the authentication problem, and I don’t think the passkey is an exception. What the passkey does provide is relief from credential stuffing, and I’m certain that consumer-facing websites see that as a massive advantage so I expect that eventually passwords will be relegated to the tomes of history, though it will likely be quite a slow process.
I’m fine with that as long as it works without my phone, internet or power.
So, a contactless smartcard
We’ll its a private key, so just a few kb of data. You can likely put it on all sorts of devices. Most services that use it will require some of the above, so I doubt the usefulness, but the same goes for most passwords.
Im curious how you access your passwords with the above criteria. Are you using a notepad with dozens/hundreds of unique passwords, some kind of dice based randomizer, or just a few passwords for many sites?
deleted by creator
private keys, etc
That’s literally just a long password that you can never recover your data from when you inevitably lose or forget it (remember we’re talking about the majority of users here who do not use password managers).
there’s literally zero technical reason that a user couldn’t reset a private key the same as a password. after all, you just pointed out they are almost the same.
edit: if you’d like to see an example create SSH keys for your GitHub account and then reset them
That’s… Literally just a long password.
I assumed you were talking about a private key as in cryptographic private key, where your data is encrypted on the remote server and your private key is required for it to be decrypted and for you to use it.
If you just talking about something to get into an SSH key then all that is is a longer password.
not at all. are you expected to remember it? would it even be possible to memorize for most? not even close to the same thing, passwords have very low entropy which causes all their problems
A password is literally just:
A secret key or passcode meets that definition 🤦 You’re most definitely on poor standing here.
A very long password that no one can remember (ie. A key) is still a password. Also are you unaware of the existence of password managers and random password generation…?