this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Privacy
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Why is the buzz around passkeys is back? I am seeing them way more often than they used to be. I think I have created passkeys for 2 apps and don't even know how that worked, it such a breeze that almost felt it wasn't secure lol.
In what ways the passkeys are different than authenticator apps?
Passkeys are meant to replace password-based login whereas TOTP apps are only meant as a 2FA method.
Convenience and security.
Authenticator apps are still vulnerable to phishing, passkeys are not.
With the ability to transfer passkeys, the attack vector phishing does not sound that far fetched. Tho i have not looked into the transfer process.
We will see i guess.
Idk, a SSH-Key is also transferrable, yet it's still safe
And given that Passkeys are essentially specialized ssh-keys, I don't see the Problem.
But I'd like to know it I'm wrong.
Why do you think SSH-Keys are safe against phishing? I mean it is unlikely, that someone will just send the key per mail or upload it somewhere since most ppl using SSH-Keys are more knowledgeable.
When you now get an easy one click solution to transfer Passkeys from one Cloud provider to another it will get easier to trick a user to do that. Scenario: You get a mail from Microsoft that there is a thread and that you need to transfer your keys to their cloud.
The thing is, that you only have to share public keys and never private ones. So you can only phish public keys…
How would you sync or transfer a passkey across devices without transferring the private key?
That’s July question: the article even points that out. If previously the private key was in hardware, never exposed, but now it has to be available to software. Does it open any potential attacks?
Even if it is less secure, this is probably a good thing to prevent vendor lock-in. I know that’s one reason I rarely use passkeys
Yea, I strictly did not set up any passkeys until I got strongbox pro, to store it outside of apple walled garden. To get 2FA secrets was hard enough (had long time no macOS device, only iOS)
That was a rhetorical question towards the commenter since the discussion point was not understood.
I read it again and agree 😂
You share public keys when registering the passkey on a third party service, but for the portability of the keys to other password managers (what the article is about) the private ones do need to be transferred (that's the whole point of making them portable).
I think the phishing concerns are about attackers using this new portability feature to get a user (via phishing / social engineering) to export/move their passkeys to the attacker's store. The point is that portability shouldn't be so user-friendly / transparent that it becomes exploitable.
That said, I don't know if this new protocol makes things THAT easy to port (probably not?).
Well, they made it very secure with the transfer of passwords /s
It felt so strange having a CSV file with all my passwords and 2FA secrets in plain text in my downloads folder..
Imagine if would not have used a encrypted partition, my passwords may still be on that disk…