- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.ml
Passkeys aren’t a full replacement in my opinion, which is what DHH gets wrong. It’s a secure, user-friendly alternative to password+MFA. If the device doesn’t have a passkey set up you revert to password+MFA.
And the fewer times that people are entering their password or email/SMS-based 2FA codes because they’re using passkeys, the less of an opportunity there is to be phished, even if the older authentication methods are still usable on the account.
Why does anyone still give a fuck what DHH has to say any more?
Rails is a ghetto has been a thing for over a decade, and the man is basically just a tech contrarian at this point.
Random email auth is some thought leadering for sure.
I’m not gonna lie I still don’t understand how passkeys work, or how they’re different from 2fa. I’m just entering a PIN and it’s ok somehow? I don’t get it.
It uses asymmetric cryptography. You sign a login request with the locally stored private key and the service verifies the signature with their stored public key. The PIN on your device is used to unlock access to the private key to sign the login request.
If you’ve ever used ssh it’s very similar to how ssh keys work. You create a cryptographic key for the site; this is the passkey itself. When you go to “log in” the client and server exchange cryptographic challenges, which also verifies the site’s identity (so you can’t be phished…another site can’t pretend to be your bank, and there are no credentials to steal anyway). Keys are stored locally and are generally access restricted by various methods like PIN, passphrase, security key, OTP, etc. When you’re entering your PIN it’s how the OS has chosen to secure the key storage. But you’ve also already passed one of the security hurdles just by having access to that phone/computer. It is “something you have”.
The passkey stored locally in some kind of hardware backed store on your device or in your password manager is the first factor: something you have.
The PIN/password or fingerprint/face to unlock the device and access the stored passkey is the second factor: something you know or something you are, respectively.
Two factors gets you to 2FA.
DHH with a pants-on-head stupid argument just because he hates the big players in tech? Must be a day ending in Y again.
I disagree with most of those arguments in the article… Additionally, there is nearly no passkey using service that does require you to still have PW and 2FA login active even if you use passkeys
We are right now in the learning/testing phase. It is not a flip and suddenly only passkey work. Transition to passkey only will be a very long time, like it was for 2FA, like, my girlfriend has it on, only at about 2 services, lol.
The main problem I have is, that people without knowledge get grabbed into walled gardens using passkeys. People with knowledge know that you can use alternative apps for passkeys, like proton or strongbox (keepass).
Just. Use. A. Fucking. Password. Manager.
It isn’t hard. People act like getting users to remember one password isn’t how it’s done already anyway. At least TFAing a password manager is way fucking easier than hoping every service they log into with “password123” has it’s own TFA. And since nearly every site uses shit TFA like a text or email message, it’s even better since they can use a Yubikey very easily instead.
Passkeys are a solution looking for a problem that hasn’t been solved already, and doing it badly.
Yes, use a password manager to store your passkeys.
Passkeys are a solution looking for a problem that hasn’t been solved already, and doing it badly.
You say that and then
hoping every service they log into with “password123” has it’s own TFA. And since nearly every site uses shit TFA like a text or email message
That’s literally a problem passkeys solve and password managers don’t lol
I make the assumption people are using the password managers like they should, which is generating unique, complex passwords, which is kinda the point. Once you hit a certain number of characters on a random password, you might as well not try. And passkeys don’t solve any sort of MFA problem, same as passwords.
And tell me something, do you realize how cunty you come off when you end a comment with “lol”?
And passkeys don’t solve any sort of MFA problem
They do in fact solve this problem. Passkeys are something you have, and are secured by something you know, or something you are.
They also solve an age-old problem with passwords, which is that regardless of how complex your password is, it can be compromised in a breach. Because you have no say in how a company stores your password. And if that company doesn’t offer 2FA or only offers sms or email verification, then you’re even more at risk. This problem doesn’t exist with passkeys.
Edit: lol
it can be compromised in a breach
Sure, and then that one password is compromised. Password managers make it trivial to use unique passwords for every service, so if a service is breached, you’re basically as screwed with passwords as passkeys.
The switching cost here is high, and the security benefits are marginal in practice IMO. I’m not against passkeys, but it should be something password managers handle, and I don’t have a strong preference between TOTP baked into your PW manager and passkeys.
Sure, and then that one password is compromised.
Which means that entire service you used that password to login to is compromised. If you were using passkeys however, you would have nothing compromised.
so if a service is breached, you’re basically as screwed with passwords as passkeys.
No… with a passkey you would be not screwed at all. You’d be entirely unaffected.
the security benefits are marginal in practice
I mean in your own example that’s a reduction of 100%. That’s kind of a huge difference.
You’re looking at this from the perspective of an educated end user. You’re pretty secure already from some common attack vectors. You’re also in the minority. Passkeys are largely about the health of the entire ecosystem. Not only do they protect against credentials being stolen, they also protect against phishing attacks because identity verification is built in. That is of huge value if you’re administering a site. Yes if everyone used a password manager there would be less value, but only about a third of users do that. And as an admin you can’t just say “well that guy got phished but it’s his own fault for not using a password manager.”
Password managers have only really taken off in the last half-decade, so one-third is kind of to be expected. I know they’ve been around a long time, but major adoption has been recent.
Passkeys will take a while to get wide adoption as well, especially with syncing problems that we’ve seen.
Password managers are never going to hit anywhere near 100% adoption rate. It requires knowledge on the part of the user and in many cases money. No grandma isn’t going to roll her own with keepass. Most likely she’ll never even know what a password manager is. And as long as those users are still out there, admins still have to deal with all the problems they bring.
Incidentally I looked and it’s been over a decade since I started using my first password manager. They’re not that new.
Password managers are too hard for the boomers
I do think that we need more standard procedures around what a reset/authorize new device looks like in a passkey world. There’s a lot about that process that just seems like it’s up to the implementer. But I don’t think that invalidates passkeys as a whole, and most people are going to have access to their mobile device for 2 factor no matter where they are.
Incidentally I have no idea who this is or whether his opinion should be lent more weight.
I just wish that companies enabling passkeys would still allow password+MFA. There are several sites that, when you enable passkeys, lock you out of MFA for devices that lack a biometric second factor of authentication. I’d love to use passkeys + biometrics otherwise, since I’ve often felt that the auth problem would be best solved with asymmetric cryptography.
EDIT: I meant to say “would still allow passkeys+MFA.” hooray for sleep deprivation lol.
If companies still allowed you to login via password then any benefit you get from Passkeys would be null and void. In order to implement passkeys properly you have to disable password authentication.
The thing is it’s then on you to secure your passkey with biometrics or a password or whatever you prefer. Your phone most likely will use biometrics by default. If you’re on Mac or PC you’ll need to buy a thumbprint scanner or use camera-based window hello / secure enclave
I just don’t get why I can’t use something like TOTP from my phone or a key fob when logging in with a passkey from my desktop. Why does my second factor have to be an on-device biometrically protected keystore? The sites I’m thinking of currently support TOTP when using passwords, so why can’t they support the same thing when using passkeys? I don’t want to place all my trust in the security of my keystore. I like that I have to unlock my phone to get a TOTP. Someone would have to compromise my local keystore and my phone, which makes it a better second factor in my opinion.
EDIT: like, at work, I ssh to servers all over the damn place using an ssh key. I have to get to those servers through a jump box that requires me to unlock my phone and provide a biometric second factor before it will allow me through. That’s asymmetric cryptography + a second factor of authentication that’s still effective even if someone has compromised my machine and has direct access to my private key. That’s what I want from passkeys.
I have to get to those servers through a jump box that requires me to unlock my phone and provide a biometric second factor before it will allow me through.
That is also the case with passkeys, if you so choose. Though they are functionally similar to your SSH key, they don’t just allow you to utilize the key just by having it loaded onto your device. When you go to use a passkey you need to authenticate your key upon use, and you can do that biometrically. For example let’s say I have a passkey on my phone which is currently unlocked and in use. If somebody runs over and steals the phone from my hand and prevents it from locking, and then attempts to authenticate to a site using my passkey, they won’t be able to.
Right, but I can’t require a second factor on a different device that operates outside of my primary device’s trust store. I’m sure there is some way to make my desktop hit my phone up directly and ask for fingerprint auth before unlocking the local keystore, but that still depends on the security of my device and my trust store. I don’t want the second factor to be totally locked to the device I’m running on. I want the server to say, “oh, cool, here’s this passkey. It looks good, but we also need a TOTP from you before you can log in,” or “loving the passkey, but I also need you to respond to the push notification we just sent to a different device and prove your identity biometrically over there.” I don’t want my second factor to be on the same device as my primary factor. I don’t know why a passkey (potentially protected by local biometric auth) + a separate server-required second factor (TOTP or push notification to a different device or something) isn’t an option.
EDIT: I could make it so a fingerprint would decrypt my SSH key rather than what I have now (i.e. a password). That would effectively be the same number of factors as you’re describing for a passkey, and it would not be good enough for my organization’s security model, nor would it be good enough for me.
I mean you don’t have to authenticate your passkey with biometrics, you can use a password.
I guess I’m not really picking up on what the benefit is you’re going for. You already have a What You Have and a What You Know or What You Are, and you want a second What You Also Have thrown in there. I mean, I guess having that as an option couldn’t hurt. but I also don’t think it’s really necessary.
Passkeys are already more secure than what you’re doing now. If what you’re aiming for is for them to be even more secure than that, then that’s an admirable goal. But as of right now they are worth it just for the fact that they’re more secure than existing solutions.
Yeah I didn’t understand passkeys. I’m like why is my browser asking to store them? What if I’m using another browser? Why is my password manager fighting with my browser on where to store this passkey?
I felt so uneasy.
So I decided not to use passkeys for now until I understood what’s going on.
I’m like why is my browser asking to store them? What if I’m using another browser? Why is my password manager fighting with my browser on where to store this passkey?
The answer to all of these questions is “For the exact same reason they do all these same things with passwords”
Think of a passkey as a very, very complex password that is stored on your device (or in a password manager) that you can use to log into websites with without ever having to know what the password is, and it’s never stored on the site you’re logging into, even in a hashed format, so it literally can’t be exposed in a breach.
It’s the exact same technology you use to connect securely to every website you visit, except used in reverse.
Passkeys are unique cert pairs for each site. The site gets the public key, you keep the private to login under your account. The site never stores your private key.
To store them simply, turn off your browsers password/passkey storage. Store them in your password manager along with other sites passwords.
Sounds similar to the SSL stuff, like for GitHub and stuff. I guess the preference in that case would be my password manager as it stores my password already.
Perhaps it’s best I pay for Bitwarden premium now and use those hardware keys people are recommending.
Also thanks!
Because its the same shit. passkeys are essentially passwordless ssh certificates. we’ve had functional MFA for ssh literally since its inception.
I am very shitty on security (I would not write this reply on a post on the cybersecurity community), and I resisted MFA for several years as being too annoying having to login to mail/SMS. After finding open source apps supporting TOTP, I feel better about it and I manually do the syncing by just transferring the secrets between my devices offline.
Passkeys are another foreign thing that I think I will get used to eventually, but for now there are too many holes in support, too much vendor lock-in (which was my main distaste for MFA, I didn’t want MS or Google Authenticator), and cumbersome (when email and SMS were the only options for MFA, difficulty of portability for passkeys).
So the problems you have with them are already solved, in the exact same ways they were solved for password/MFA. If you let Apple manage everything for you, it doesn’t matter whether you’re using passwords or passkeys, you’re locked in either way. But you always have the option to manage your passkeys manually (just like you’re doing with your TOTP) or using a third party cross-platform solution that allows for passkey import and export.
All the major password managers store passkeys now. I have every passkey I’ve been able to make stored in Bitwarden, and they’re accessible on all my devices.
Article is behind the times, and this dude was wrong to “rip out” passkeys as an option.
If a password manager stores passkeys, how is that much different than just using a password manager with passwords?
Storing passwords in a password manager is storing a shared secret where you can only control the security on your end and thus is still vulnerable to theft in a breach, negligence on the part of the party you’ve shared it with, phishing, man in the middle potentially, etc.
Storing a passkey in a password manager on the other hand is storing an unshared secret that nobody but you has access to, doesn’t leave your device during use, is highly phishing resistant, can’t be mishandled by the sites you use it to connect to etc.
That’s a typical DHH article, essentially. He has some interesting insights, but everything else is borderline cult-leader opinions, and some people follow it as gospel
I feel like if DHH hadn’t picked Ruby on Rails it and standalone Ruby would be much more popular today.
Whenever I read an article about security (and read the comments, even here on Lemmy) I’m constantly frustrated and depressed by a couple of things.
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Corporations making things shittier with the intention of locking customers in to their stupid proprietary ecosystem. And of course, they are always seeking more data harvesting. Security itself is way down the list of their priories, if it’s even there at all.
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Users being lazy trend-followers who quickly sacrifice their security on the altar of convenience and whatever shiny new FOMO thing is offered up for “better security”.
It’s a very bad combination. Doing security right is a bit inconvenient (which users hate) and expensive (which corporations hate).
You would be less constantly frustrated and depressed if you learned a little bit about security, instead of getting upset about imagined problems with technology you don’t understand.
I’m not against passkeys. They have some real advantages. And I understand more than you think.
My comment is primarily about the preferred ecosystems that tend to come along with these newer solutions (like Apple’s iCloud or Google’s Password Manager) and how the corporations take advantage of user laziness and bandwagon jumping.
They may not force you to be exclusive with them, but they definitely want you to be. And over time they will likely make it more and more inconvenient not to be locked in with them.
For contrast, I use BitWarden for password management and Bitwarden Authenticator for TOTP (and I keep safe copies of TOTP secret keys elsewhere). This is a generic open-standards-first approach to things, with relatively easy recovery should you lose something. You can export your passwords. You have copies of your secret keys. You are in no way locked in to BitWarden forever.
Passkeys can also work within that type of operational framework! Like TOTP which normally uses RFC6238, Passkeys tend to use CTAP or WebAuthn. All of the above are open standards. And this is a good thing!
But do you really think Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc, want to play nice long term? Hopefully they will. But I have also run into evil nonsense like LastPass, which even though they also used open standards, their software would not allow you to do simple things like recover your own secret keys, export your data, etc. (Not to mention the embarrassing security breach they had and the wretched response, the main reasons to dump them).
While I am not directly comparing an idiot company like GoTo Tech with Apple et al, they all have the same types of big brain MBA types working for them who love to constantly brainstorm new ideas on how to screw the users over by taking features away and calling it a “software upgrade”.
So, passkeys as a security mechanism: sure, this gets my vote. But trusting the big corporations not to change the rules on us later…come on, get real. They love limiting or removing portability and recovery options whenever they can.
Bottom line: don’t assume passkeys are inherently good or bad. It’s simply a security standard that can work well if implemented correctly. Passkeys make logging in easier. But will they also make recovery / export / migration easier…? Because if it’s not easy, people won’t do it.
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I wish all sites using 2FA would just support hardware keys instead of authenticator apps. It’s so much easier to login to a site by just plugging in my hardware key and tapping its button, than going to my authenticator app and typing over some code within a certain time.
It’s even sinpler than email 2fa or sms 2fa or vendor app 2fa.
For authenticator app you also can’t easily add more devices unless you share the database which is bad for security. For hardware security key you can just add the key as an additional 2fa, if the site allows it.
Agreed, my main issues with hardware keys are that so few sites support them, and the OS support is kinda bad like in Windows the window pops up underneath everything and sometimes requires a pin entered.
I also hate that when I last looked nobody made a key that supports USB-C, USB-A, and NFC. So now I’ve got an awkward adapter I need to carry on my keychain.
His “just use email” like that isn’t very obviously worse in every respect kind of undermines his whole premise.
It’s because he has an email company he wants you to use for $100 a year lol
His whole premise is undermined by him not doing any research on the topic before deciding to write a blog post. Proton passkeys for instance, are cross platform, and the ability to transfer passkeys between devices is one of the features being worked on by the other providers.
Yeah… Why are articles like this being upvoted… I expected better from lemmy
This is the “Technology” community which isn’t for people who are actually tech-savvy in any functional way, it’s just for gadget-head laymen.
The problem with passkeys is that they’re essentially a halfway house to a password manager, but tied to a specific platform in ways that aren’t obvious to a user at all, and liable to easily leave them unable to access of their accounts.
Agreed, in its current state I wouldn‘t teach someone less technically inclined to solely rely on passkeys saved by the default platform if you plan on using different devices, it just leads to trouble.
If you’re going to teach someone how to deal with all of this, and all the potential pitfalls that might lock them out of your service, you almost might as well teach them how to use a cross-platform password manager
Using a password manager is still the solution. Pick one where your passkeys can be safed and most of the authors problems are solved.
The only thing that remains is how to log in if you are not on a device you own (and don’t have the password manager). The author mentions it: the QR code approach for cross device sign in. I don’t think it’s cumbersome, i think it’s actually a great and foolproof way to sign in. I have yet to find a website which implements it though (Edit: Might be my specific setup‘s fault).
people will pick the corporate options that are shoved on their faces, not the sensible open source user-respecting ones.
vendor lockin will happen if we adopt passkeys as they are right now.
Bitwarden just announced a consortium with Apple, Google, 1Password, etc to create a secure import/export format for credentials; spurred by the need for passkeys to be portable between password managers (but also works for passwords/other credential types)
I’m definitely holding off on passkeys until that project is finished. I also don’t want vendor lock in and while that seems like the solution, it seems like they just started working on it.
Import export is not the same as interoperability
The interoperability already exists in the protocol webauthn, part of FIDO2 which has been around for almost a decade. Interoperability is not remotely an issue with passkeys. Imported/export is/was and also already has a solution in the works.
So I can use the same passkey from say, bitwarden and windows hello? Why do you even need import export then?
Yes you can use a passkey set up on any given service to authenticate to a service that supports passkeys. You’d need import/export to move a given passkey from bitwarden to Windows.
It could be your browser / system that is struggling to show it. When I use my work computer and Microsoft edge, I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation where the QR code didn’t work. When I use flatpak’d Firefox on my Linux laptop, I experience more trouble, probably because of the sandboxing.
According to the device support page i should be ok, but yeah there might be something weird going on.
QR codes are good 50% of the time; when you’re trying to log in on a pc.
The reverse case is extremely annoyingCould you elaborate? I am assuming that everbody would have the password manager on their mobile phone with them, which is used to scan the qr code. I think that’s a reasonable assumption.
I agree that if you wanted the pc to act as the authenticator (device that has the passkey) it wouldn’t work with qr codes. But is that a usecase that happens at all for average people? Does anyone login to a mobile device that you don’t own, and you only have your pc nearby and not your own mobile phone?
I’m thinking of phone recovery, where you’re trying to get all your stuff back on a new device.
With a password manager, simply logging in will get you there and until passkeys can be synced automatically just like passwords this will need to be handled somehow.I hope I am not misunderstanding you. What you are worried about is passkeys in the password manager not syncing to new devices? They are though, with password managers that support passkeys like Bitwarden, ProtonPass, 1Password etc…
Currently using it on Bitwarden, if I log in to a new device, the passkeys are there.
You understood correctly. Seems like I missed some news on the syncing front.