This is some weird doom and gloom take on a real improvement in public security that we don’t see very often. Of course there are a lot of stake holders. Of course every protocol is complicated. I run security for a company, and my auth systems mandate attested (i.e., company-provided) hardware keys. You’re not using a passkey on my systems that I’m not providing you. Pretty simple concept, yes?
Do you have any examples of any public service requiring attested keys? No, because it really doesn’t make sense. But because the protocol supports it, people shouldnt use passkeys? Shitty hot take.
I agree it would be helpful to make the feature set clearer to the end user, but the UX are still a mess across OS and websites. IMO that’s not a reason to not use them.
Passkeys are much more phishing resistant. They apply unqiue-credential best practices. I’ve been managing unique passwords for decades, and passkeys are a great improvement. Very few companies are going to completely remove other forms of auth, and so suggesting passkeys are ruining people’s ability to share passwords is really premature. And even so, companies have been pursuing other strategies for identifying shared accounts much more effectively than shared credentials. Thinking that’s a reason to not use passkeys just tells me you aren’t valuing how passkeys elevate public opsec.
Passkeys are projected to overcome TOTP market share next year. That is honestly amazing. I like the writeup on the features, but this nefarious, conspiratorial narrative doesn’t fit what’s actually happening.
There are lots of reasons to like passkeys from a technical/enterprise standpoint, but I do think you’re missing the critical issue the article is speaking to: digital sovereignty.
Passkeys, while more secure in the average usecase, shift the balance of control over your access to services. Yes, you can no longer write your password down on a post-it and leak it in a photo—thats’s a good property. But trading that at the expense of your freedom to run software as you see fit on hardware you bought and paid for? For many people, myself included, that’s not an acceptable tradeoff. There are plenty of tools and systems around passwords that folks can use to make passwords+2FA match or even exceed the security properties of passkeys.
The thing that should chill everyone is the fact that built into the standard is a switch (given to service providers, not users) that locks out the people that do want to have control of their digital infrastructure. Not everyone can or should be expected to run like that, but they should not be blocked from doing so. Similar with the Right to Repair; not everyone can exercise that right on their own, but no one should be prevented from repairing what they bought.
Similary, I do believe it’s my neighbor’s right to practice a religion of their choosing. So if the government tries to prevent them from doing that, I’m going to go grab my pitchfork, not because I share their religion, but because they should be able to make that choice. Likewise, while I might not want to exert control over how my credentials are backed up, I still reserve the right to do it, and support anyone else’s ability to do it.
And to address the slippery slope objection, I have to point out that this is not particularly theoretical. When Big Tech has provided service providers with the opportunity to enforce restrictions on your device, service providers have used it. Widevine DRM, Google Play Protect, etc… It’s why my LineageOS phone can’t use banking apps, which is a shame since some features like Zelle payments are specifically a mobile-only feature, and so I cannot use it anymore. I either run my phone to the exact specs and settings that my bank and Google prefer, or I’m denied access to basic banking anywhere but my desktop (and who knows how long until the block my access there, I run Linux afterall).
I do not trust Big Tech with my devices, and passkeys increase their capability to deny anyone who doesn’t buy into their ecosystem, and further entrenches those who already are. I for one find that despicable, and an unacceptable tradeoff. There’s no reason it has to be this way though, passkeys could have been the best of both worlds. However, they’ve been compromised with features that serve platforms at the expense of user freedom. It’s the kind of disempowerment that happens when you give the reins to power-hungry, profit-seeking corporations.
There are plenty of tools and systems around passwords that folks can use to make passwords+2FA match or even exceed the security properties of passkeys.
Likewise, while I might not want to exert control over how my credentials are backed up, I still reserve the right to do it, and support anyone else’s ability to do it.
Widevine DRM, Google Play Protect, etc…
I do not trust Big Tech with my devices, and passkeys increase their capability to deny anyone who doesn’t buy into their ecosystem
I can only speak for myself, but I hold all of those values you claim. I see no evidence, technical or otherwise, that passkeys are subverting or acting counter to any of these principles. Frankly, it’s a baseless claim that passkeys lock people out of their own control/infrastructure. I think people conflate non-transferable, TPM passkeys with passkeys. Just don’t use that if you don’t want to.
FWIW, passwords were never “yours”, they are PSK (Pre-Shared Key) with a service. Maybe you invented the credential, but it’s not yours. You have historically enjoyed being able to bulk export credentials, and if that property is important to you, then you should be using transferable passkeys. Passkeys have a well-defined transferable format – if they are the type that can be exported.
I can only continue repeating that the passkey spec is public and transparent. If the service is not supporting passkeys in a way that you want to use them, then complain to that service. I don’t decide that service X doesn’t support transferable passkeys, but they should.
DRM and other gate keeping efforts, IMO, are tangential to passkey support. Passkeys are fine, vendor-locking and walled gardens are not.
I see no evidence, technical or otherwise, that passkeys are subverting or acting counter to any of these principles. Frankly, it’s a baseless claim that passkeys lock people out of their own control/infrastructure.
The evidence is in the fact that the passkey standard provides the means to deny service to anyone whose passkeys do not match the service provider’s preferences. This is a non-issue with passwords, since there’s no way for a provider to tell whether or not, for example, a password is simply remembered, stored in your password manager, backed up, shared, etc… The threat model of the user can inform what choices they make there. The platform may require certain things of the password, like length requirments or another factor, but it ends there.
You’re correct in that the standard supports passkeys with similar data sovereignty properties; however, the standard includes controls that allow service providers to dictate that those properties be configured to the provider’s preferences, not the user’s.
Just don’t use [locked down passkeys] if you don’t want to.
It would all be well and good if that were actually entirely my choice, but it’s not. The standard specifically includes a trump card for the service provider in the form of remote attestation. You seem to think that’s tangential, but I reject that. It’s kinda the whole point.
Authenticating based on a shared secret is an interface with a special property: there’s no way for a service provider to know how you remember a secret. That guarantee is extremely important. Service providers accepting password based authentication are guaranteed to not be able to enforce requirements on how you remember your password.
The Passkey standard removes that critical protection by explicitly supporting remote attestation in the standard. It does not matter that the standard is public if it does not preserve that guarantee.
Passkeys are fine, vendor-locking and walled gardens are not.
If you’re not a fan of walled gardens, I would recommend against giving corporations the mortar, bricks, gates, and locks with which they use to build them. Maybe they won’t use them in ways you don’t like, but you’ll never have a guarantee that they won’t.
means to deny service to anyone whose passkeys do not match the service provider’s preferences. This is a non-issue with passwords, since there’s no way for a provider to tell whe
Yes it is. I have had to work with many companies that set password specifications, and sometimes they prevented secure passwords. My bank maxed out at 11 characters for many years!
You dont own the specification for a password, the service provider does. I always wanted to use deterministic password generation (i.e. hash(servicename + memorable password), but never could because every provider has different “password rules” about different character types, etc.
IMO you’re reading way too much into the value proposition of passwords. Services can “deny service” for arbitrary reasons already with zero consequences, but your idea is that they will ban based on… passkeys? You’ve got people banned from youtube for arbitrary comments. You’ve got MS locking out non-profits for arbitrary reasons. But in your mind, those all pale in comparison to what will happen if we all start using passkeys? I’m not buying what you’re selling.
You seem to think that’s tangential, but I reject that. It’s kinda the whole point.
I didn’t say it was tangential. Attestation is for very specific purpose. Non-attested credentials are not sufficient for government and corporate security. I cannot allow BYO hardware to authenticate my users on my services. I highly doubt any public service would require attested passkeys. I doubt passwords will stop being allowed, almost ever, so you probably have nothing to fear. Maybe you can throw that comment back in my face in 20+ years, heh.
Here’s another counter-point: Google, Apple, et. al already implement proprietary authentication mechanisms. Sign-in prompts on recent devices, email codes, etc. are all proprietary. None of these companies killed passwords despite having implemented the tools to do exactly that with vendor lock-in. All the evidence is the opposite. This is one of the first times we’re even getting an open standard authentication, the exact opposite of “walled garden”.
Authenticating based on a shared secret is an interface with a special property: there’s no way for a service provider to know how you remember a secret.
The same special property that allows rampant attacks on the public. I deal with so many people with compromised email inboxes, malware installs, stolen credentials, etc. Passwords are not the end solution to end user security, and I welcome improvements that also simplify UX.
I think we’ve probably hashed out enough of the sides of the argument. Good luck to you.
But in your mind, those all pale in comparison to what will happen if we all start using passkeys? I’m not buying what you’re selling.
Because you appear to be misunderstand what I’m saying. Be careful to not put words in my mouth. I said nothing regarding bans.
I am, however, arguing that a service provider can reject your passkey if they dont like how you manage it, (e.g make it copiable). To access that service using a passkey, you’ll have to accept storing your credential on their terms.
And to be clear, I’m in no way blind to the issues with passwords. We’ve had to tack on a bunch of extras to have password based security keep up, like TOTP, password hashing, recovery methods, phishing resistant tokens, security questions, and so on. I’m not arguing that passwords are perfect; I’m arguing that they preserve the users ultimate control over the credential. I’m totally open and hopeful for improvements to authentication as long as they similarly preserve the user’s freedom to manage their credentials as they see fit.
And this may be where the difference in our values shows, since it appears that you view the user’s freedom as more of a problem than a boon:
The same special property that allows rampant attacks on the public. I deal with so many people with compromised email inboxes, malware installs, stolen credentials, etc. Passwords are not the end solution to end user security, and I welcome improvements that also simplify UX.
I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that, but I simply don’t think some users making mistakes justifies allowing a service provider to remove a critical freedom from the user. I dont believe that improved UX and security has to come at the cost of user freedom, but that’s what passkeys explicitly allow for by design. I fundamentally disagree with that.
I didn’t say [attestation] was tangential. Attestation is for very specific purpose.
Fair enough, I tend to thow it in the same category as “DRM and other gate-keeping technologies” which you did call “tangential.” At the end of the day, for the purposes of my argument, they are the same: a service wishes to exert control over how a client runs, and I object to such limitions broadly speaking. The computers I own work for me, not the service. (Of course this changes in enterprises that own their own clients, like the workstations used by their workforce. But even in those situations, however, I would argue that there are generally more effective measures than remote attestation. But I digress…)
I highly doubt any public service would require attested passkeys.
Ah, but how can you be sure? You’re missing the guarentee that they can’t flip the script on you. The standard allows them to start forcing users to rotate their passwords and passkeys for ones that require attestation of their preferred settings. Maybe it’s unlikely, but “unlikely” is still a massive downgrade from “impossible.” IMO, it’s unacceptable.
Here’s another counter-point: Google, Apple, et. al already implement proprietary authentication mechanisms. …
Just because a standard is open does not mean it isn’t rigged in the favor of closed platforms. This is especially the case with passkeys, where platforms use them to further entrench you into their ecosystem, often under the guise of “look how good the UX is!” For example, MacOS really, really wants you to tie your passkeys to their keychain, so that they can control how it’s backed up, transferred, and stored. Remote attestation only makes this worse, opening the possibility that a service provider can enforce that you have to use MacOS’s keychain. Sounds like a walled garden to me.
Apologies if I miss-stated your point and conflated service’s other arbitrary decisions with what you’re suggesting may happen with passkeys.
Maybe I have one follow-up question, there are a number of websites that just don’t use passwords at all. It’s always one-time codes sent to emails. Where does this fall on your freedom spectrum?
Do you have similar arguments about HTTP 3? QUIC? Web RTC? There’s so many protocols that could be used in a way to lock in users. Just because it has some bits in the schema, doesn’t really mean much. Particularly when it’s actually supplying a very real need in other contexts. Nobody wants 30 versions of passkey-alt protocols.
FWIW, passwords were never “yours”, they are PSK (Pre-Shared Key) with a service. Maybe you invented the credential, but it’s not yours. You have historically enjoyed being able to bulk export credentials, and if that property is important to you, then you should be using transferable passkeys. Passkeys have a well-defined transferable format – if they are the type that can be exported.
This is the equivalent of Sony arguing that you never owned any games, you owned a license. Congrats. You’re the best kind of correct - technically correct.
There is no flag on a password that determines if it is transferable. There is no amount of “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” that will work out in your favor if you’re not in the majority. If you give corporations the power to limit consumption while increasing prices, they will eventually use it. Especially if they provide a product you can’t get anywhere else (and this is their goal for every product - even if they have to buy other companies to do it - even if they have to collude to offer the same service). It’s the foundation of our entire economic system.
This is the equivalent of Sony arguing that you never owned any games
It’s far from that and bad analogies pollute otherwise very simple conversations. If you want a more apt analogy, this “debate” is shaping up closer to LED vs incandescent bulbs.
It’s easy to say passwords are sufficient when you’re one person practicing good op-sec. It’s not when you’re supporting thousands of people of varying technical proficiency, thousands of machines, thousands of services, and thousands of bad-actors. It was an even simpler time when 4 digit PINs were “sufficient”, but the world you and I live in is more complicated. Certain passkeys are transferable, so you’re not even losing out on that capability. Curmudgeon arguments aren’t convincing. Passkeys aren’t “giving power away”. Using passkeys doesn’t mean your giving up freedom. Passkeys have no bearing on the “economic system” and inflation. As far as the IT ecosystem is concerned, we’ve never lived in a more open and capable time. There are so many alternatives to every service (that isn’t tightly coupled to copyright). Of course companies are trying to offer unique products people can’t get anywhere else. None of this has to do with passkeys.
To put it simply, every passkey is locked into a large combination of factors: device + platform (OS) + app + the service being used. It is not trivial and often downright impossible to change any of these factors or to render them agnostic. This makes it complicated or impossible to backup passkeys or make them portable.
It’s fine for them to not be portable when they’re used on a work phone, running the company mandated OS, authentication app and passkey store, to login into a suite of apps that are also company-approved.
I do need portability and backup as an individual who wants to be able to login into multiple services across multiple apps running on multiple OS on multiple devices. But I can’t, because the big tech players (Microsoft/Google/Apple etc.) are actively trying to capture passkeys into their platforms and make it hard to get out in any practical way.
With passwords and TOTP I can run something that will sync them across devices and fill them in into any app in a unified manner (or use copy & paste if all else fails). With passkeys I can’t.
Passkeys can be transferrable and syncable ( see keepassx, bitwarden, and relatives). But ideally, eventually, you never sync them because every time you log into a service with a new device, that device gets its own passkey. No need to sync them and you can revoke a devices access if it is lost or stolen without effecting any other device. They are closer to client certs than passwords in that respect.
FWIW, the article may be a bit outdated. I’m not a FIDO expert by any means, but there have been improvements in the spec to help define how to transfer passkeys (CXF and CXP). The situation should be better than 2024, but if you’re using TPM-locked passkeys, you’re just in that locked box already.
I think there’s somewhat of a conflation of concerns. It sounds like your concern is, I have a credential manager and want to migrate to a new credential manager. I just want it to be simple to migrate my massive number of passwords, right? I need to bulk export + bulk import. EASY. But… what if your first password manager has a bug in the seed generator? Oops, you have to rotate 500 passwords now… there is no easy, off the shelf solution for that. It’s basically the same for hardware-bound passkeys. If you generate hardware-bound passkeys, you’re not going to simply replicate them to another hardware-bound passkey. The whole purpose of that type of credential, is to make it hardware-bound. There are a lot of meaningful reasons to do that from a security POV.
Now, I think what probably needs to be made clearer, is that if you do want that kind of credential, you shouldn’t be using TPM-backed passkeys. You should be purchasing independent hardware (FIDO2 hardware keys) or only make software+transferable passkeys. Personally, I have several hardware keys and I register them with one being a backup. If the vendor posts a vulnerability notice that there’s some big gap in their hardware, I will have to go and rotate every passkey. I know that is what I am signing up for, but maybe not a lot of people do.
Which credential manager, and which service is not working with it? Just looking for an example to understand what you’re struggling with. I feel like I don’t have these problems heh.
What do you mean, which. All of them have this problem. You can’t force any platform owner to use your favorite credential storage when they decide they don’t want to. All of them will tell you “for my services you use my storage, period”.
I’ve personally refused to use Apple for decades because of their walled-garden, and it sounds like I’ll continue to follow that principle, heh. But that also has nothing to do with Passkeys, and everything to do with whatever Apple is doing. So I guess, you got me there, Apple sucks.
I will say, I am able to deploy FIDO2 for SSO on Apple devices just fine with both Microsoft Intune and Jamf. But that’s not really Apple’s Passkey vault.
I haven’t found this to be the case in practice (IE passkeys are plenty portable). I’ve successfully used passkeys on multiple browsers, OS’s, and apps, all stored using a FOSS password manager (keepass). Any FOSS password manager that is either self-hosted, or syncs, should work just as well with passkeys as it does for regular passwords or TOTP.
My issue with passkeys is the fallback.
For instance, when the biometric fails, you can use a fallback login. That’s fine (and good that it exists). But the fallback for me is a pin number. That pin is far less secure than my password or a randomized TOTP number.
Yeah good question, and more people should give consideration to account recovery. Are you referring to recovery PINs? There’s really a couple aspects to the design:
They are single use – this is really just to make sure users aren’t coming to rely on these PINs. It’s also a simple fact that passwords that are typed are more likely to be leaked than passwords that are never typed. Single-use do a great job taking advantage of that.
They lock after very few attempts and generally have more aggressive anti-hammering/brute force/backoff protection than password/TOTP attempts.
They help get new devices registered without already having a passkey.
Securing/backing them up has the same challenges as TOTP secrets management. Storing them in a password manager is what I generally do, but there are a few that warrant keeping offline completely and storing it in a fire-resistant/water-proof enclosure.
The other reliable recovery is just registering several passkeys and keeping one as the recovery credential. I always issue two hardware keys per employee, and we have a pretty lax policy if more are needed or replaced. We also don’t allow employees to recover their own accounts. If we’re at that situation, we need to know in order to help. And FWIW, I don’t use biometrics.
My background is very much not in this world so caveat my questions/response below with that mind set. I do however try to practice decent personal opsec such 2fa (TOTP), password manager with random generation, etc.
I feel like a lot of what you stated was covered in the article. For example the article states that problem isn’t the number of stakeholders, it’s that none of them are consumer advocacy groups.
I understand that the author maybe leaned on the password sharing example too much but I think that was in an effort to present the material in a friendlier manner to the average reader. The closing statement makes it clear it’s not really about Netflix, etc. The main concern is that attested passkey requirement will now be the easiest way to force specific software and hardware upon user. The GraphenOS example is a good one.
You might not use the attested flag in that manner but I have zero doubt that once passkey adoption rate passes a certain threshold Google will be more than glad to miss-use that flag to lock people out of their gmail account unless they have the most recent phone and software.
Do you have any examples of any public service requiring attested keys? No, because it really doesn’t make sense. But because the protocol supports it, people shouldnt use passkeys? Shitty hot take.
I think this is a bad take. “Because this potential is not being misused right now it won’t be a problem in the future” has not really served us well thus far.
My understanding is that the article is saying that passkeys are giving away too much control to the second party. That can and will be abused.
it’s that none of them are consumer advocacy groups.
I would put that more as a curiosity than a red flag. I doubt they were excluding groups, but happy to hear about if they were (e.g. donation minimums or something to that effect). The author actually says that whole paragraph is “notable” – great, noted. I hope that doesn’t mean they were using it as an argument for “Do not use [passkeys]” (the title of the article). FWIW, W3C recommends use of passkeys. EFF has had blog articles for 3+ years suggesting advantages of Passkeys. I also don’t know what a consumer advocacy group would suggest differently here – DONT implement an attestation spec? Attestation is a massive improvement for specific types of security.
The GraphenOS example is a good one.
I went and looked for what you were referring to and didn’t find anything. What do you mean by this? I use GrapheneOS. I use passkeys. Google being hostile to third party OS doesn’t seem related but maybe I am missing something.
I have zero doubt that once passkey adoption rate passes a certain threshold Google will be more than glad to miss-use that flag to lock people out of their gmail account unless they have the most recent phone and software.
Well this seems like a reasonable point I should expand on. Maybe I can plant a seed of doubt about this hypothesis. A few comments:
People being locked out of their email is actually one of the biggest logistical nightmares for email providers. Proving someone is who they say they are is actually fairly difficult as well as doing it at scale. People lock themselves out of their own email. People get locked out of their email because of phishing attacks. In practice, Passkeys reduce phishing rates significantly. That’s a massive win for email providers in reducing their burden. Intentionally locking out a massive number of their customers is an unthinkably bad move, comically bad. It wouldn’t happen.
Email is the most important mechanism of communication for people’s security. Bank and financial accounts, paid services, government notices… they are almost all through email. The idea that they will vendor-lock email to specific hardware… it’s not realistic. They would face such massive PR And public blowback. Email is also accessed from more than just your phone. “Requiring” an attested phone would kill a massive use case.
People already feel locked to their email provider – it’s extremely difficult to change all contacts you have to a new email address. Passkeys don’t change that. Phone hardware doesn’t change that. So I’d say it’s just a continued problem, and not a reason to not use passkeys.
The FIDO Alliance had like three phone manufacturers out of 250 members.
Overall, I don’t see how passkeys, or attestation, could lead to a world where any public service would want to require attestation, and even if they did, there’s no reason it would be “requires my X branded phone”. These companies supported the development of this protocol for the specific reason of NOT wanting to cater to specific vendors. This is a vendor-neutral specification. There are many hardware and software providers. They all have their own motivations, and they hope implementing the spec brings in more customers, improves consumer security, and reduces their operational costs. Do you still have zero doubts about a future world with vendor-locked attested passkeys for public services?
passkeys are giving away too much control to the second party.
There are already dozens of hardware and software passkey vendors. It’s honestly amazing how little lock-in there is. There’s a half dozen FOSS authn services providing passkey services. You can buy dedicated hardware for passkeys from multiple independent companies. What “control” are you referring to? Companies could always force rotate your password, make it invalid, etc. Any control you thought you had was an illusion.
There are already dozens of hardware and software passkey vendors. It’s honestly amazing how little lock-in there is.
If my passkeys are spread across dozens of vendors I wouldn’t call that good, first of all, it’s just a headache.
Secondly, just because there’s many of them doesn’t mean there’s no lock-in. Can I get my passkeys out? Can I migrate them freely between any vendors? Can I take backups for myself from all the vendors? Can I restore the backups into each vendor? Can I replace those vendors with a self-hosted solution?
If my passkeys are spread across dozens of vendors
You’re picking what vendor you want, not picking unique vendors for every unique passkey.
Can I get my passkeys out? Can I migrate them freely between any vendors? Can I take backups for myself from all the vendors? Can I restore the backups into each vendor? Can I replace those vendors with a self-hosted solution?
It depends. It sounds like you just don’t like or want hardware-locked/TPM passkeys. If you generate that type of passkey, then no you can’t do much of that. Maybe your major complaint is that some major OS’s default to hardware-bound passkeys?
My reference to “vendor” meant to include self-hosted/FOSS solutions.
You’re picking what vendor you want, not picking unique vendors for every unique passkey.
I don’t get to pick anything, in fact. Most often you’re told “that’s how it is, that’s where the passkey goes” and there’s nothing you can do about it.
It sounds like you just don’t like or want hardware-locked/TPM passkeys. If you generate that type of passkey, then no you can’t do much of that.
Again, _I_ typically don’t get to make that choice, it’s being made for me. And that’s a problem.
I replied to someone else asking the same thing, but we can avoid this infinite-universe syndrome. Which service is forcing a specific passkey provider, and doesn’t offer alternatives? I just need an example to understand because I don’t know of any and I have been using passkeys for awhile, so I’d appreciate being informed.
This is some weird doom and gloom take on a real improvement in public security that we don’t see very often. Of course there are a lot of stake holders. Of course every protocol is complicated. I run security for a company, and my auth systems mandate attested (i.e., company-provided) hardware keys. You’re not using a passkey on my systems that I’m not providing you. Pretty simple concept, yes?
Do you have any examples of any public service requiring attested keys? No, because it really doesn’t make sense. But because the protocol supports it, people shouldnt use passkeys? Shitty hot take.
I agree it would be helpful to make the feature set clearer to the end user, but the UX are still a mess across OS and websites. IMO that’s not a reason to not use them.
Passkeys are much more phishing resistant. They apply unqiue-credential best practices. I’ve been managing unique passwords for decades, and passkeys are a great improvement. Very few companies are going to completely remove other forms of auth, and so suggesting passkeys are ruining people’s ability to share passwords is really premature. And even so, companies have been pursuing other strategies for identifying shared accounts much more effectively than shared credentials. Thinking that’s a reason to not use passkeys just tells me you aren’t valuing how passkeys elevate public opsec.
Passkeys are projected to overcome TOTP market share next year. That is honestly amazing. I like the writeup on the features, but this nefarious, conspiratorial narrative doesn’t fit what’s actually happening.
There are lots of reasons to like passkeys from a technical/enterprise standpoint, but I do think you’re missing the critical issue the article is speaking to: digital sovereignty.
Passkeys, while more secure in the average usecase, shift the balance of control over your access to services. Yes, you can no longer write your password down on a post-it and leak it in a photo—thats’s a good property. But trading that at the expense of your freedom to run software as you see fit on hardware you bought and paid for? For many people, myself included, that’s not an acceptable tradeoff. There are plenty of tools and systems around passwords that folks can use to make passwords+2FA match or even exceed the security properties of passkeys.
The thing that should chill everyone is the fact that built into the standard is a switch (given to service providers, not users) that locks out the people that do want to have control of their digital infrastructure. Not everyone can or should be expected to run like that, but they should not be blocked from doing so. Similar with the Right to Repair; not everyone can exercise that right on their own, but no one should be prevented from repairing what they bought.
Similary, I do believe it’s my neighbor’s right to practice a religion of their choosing. So if the government tries to prevent them from doing that, I’m going to go grab my pitchfork, not because I share their religion, but because they should be able to make that choice. Likewise, while I might not want to exert control over how my credentials are backed up, I still reserve the right to do it, and support anyone else’s ability to do it.
And to address the slippery slope objection, I have to point out that this is not particularly theoretical. When Big Tech has provided service providers with the opportunity to enforce restrictions on your device, service providers have used it. Widevine DRM, Google Play Protect, etc… It’s why my LineageOS phone can’t use banking apps, which is a shame since some features like Zelle payments are specifically a mobile-only feature, and so I cannot use it anymore. I either run my phone to the exact specs and settings that my bank and Google prefer, or I’m denied access to basic banking anywhere but my desktop (and who knows how long until the block my access there, I run Linux afterall).
I do not trust Big Tech with my devices, and passkeys increase their capability to deny anyone who doesn’t buy into their ecosystem, and further entrenches those who already are. I for one find that despicable, and an unacceptable tradeoff. There’s no reason it has to be this way though, passkeys could have been the best of both worlds. However, they’ve been compromised with features that serve platforms at the expense of user freedom. It’s the kind of disempowerment that happens when you give the reins to power-hungry, profit-seeking corporations.
I can only speak for myself, but I hold all of those values you claim. I see no evidence, technical or otherwise, that passkeys are subverting or acting counter to any of these principles. Frankly, it’s a baseless claim that passkeys lock people out of their own control/infrastructure. I think people conflate non-transferable, TPM passkeys with passkeys. Just don’t use that if you don’t want to.
FWIW, passwords were never “yours”, they are PSK (Pre-Shared Key) with a service. Maybe you invented the credential, but it’s not yours. You have historically enjoyed being able to bulk export credentials, and if that property is important to you, then you should be using transferable passkeys. Passkeys have a well-defined transferable format – if they are the type that can be exported.
I can only continue repeating that the passkey spec is public and transparent. If the service is not supporting passkeys in a way that you want to use them, then complain to that service. I don’t decide that service X doesn’t support transferable passkeys, but they should.
DRM and other gate keeping efforts, IMO, are tangential to passkey support. Passkeys are fine, vendor-locking and walled gardens are not.
The evidence is in the fact that the passkey standard provides the means to deny service to anyone whose passkeys do not match the service provider’s preferences. This is a non-issue with passwords, since there’s no way for a provider to tell whether or not, for example, a password is simply remembered, stored in your password manager, backed up, shared, etc… The threat model of the user can inform what choices they make there. The platform may require certain things of the password, like length requirments or another factor, but it ends there.
You’re correct in that the standard supports passkeys with similar data sovereignty properties; however, the standard includes controls that allow service providers to dictate that those properties be configured to the provider’s preferences, not the user’s.
It would all be well and good if that were actually entirely my choice, but it’s not. The standard specifically includes a trump card for the service provider in the form of remote attestation. You seem to think that’s tangential, but I reject that. It’s kinda the whole point.
Authenticating based on a shared secret is an interface with a special property: there’s no way for a service provider to know how you remember a secret. That guarantee is extremely important. Service providers accepting password based authentication are guaranteed to not be able to enforce requirements on how you remember your password.
The Passkey standard removes that critical protection by explicitly supporting remote attestation in the standard. It does not matter that the standard is public if it does not preserve that guarantee.
If you’re not a fan of walled gardens, I would recommend against giving corporations the mortar, bricks, gates, and locks with which they use to build them. Maybe they won’t use them in ways you don’t like, but you’ll never have a guarantee that they won’t.
Yes it is. I have had to work with many companies that set password specifications, and sometimes they prevented secure passwords. My bank maxed out at 11 characters for many years!
You dont own the specification for a password, the service provider does. I always wanted to use deterministic password generation (i.e. hash(servicename + memorable password), but never could because every provider has different “password rules” about different character types, etc.
IMO you’re reading way too much into the value proposition of passwords. Services can “deny service” for arbitrary reasons already with zero consequences, but your idea is that they will ban based on… passkeys? You’ve got people banned from youtube for arbitrary comments. You’ve got MS locking out non-profits for arbitrary reasons. But in your mind, those all pale in comparison to what will happen if we all start using passkeys? I’m not buying what you’re selling.
I didn’t say it was tangential. Attestation is for very specific purpose. Non-attested credentials are not sufficient for government and corporate security. I cannot allow BYO hardware to authenticate my users on my services. I highly doubt any public service would require attested passkeys. I doubt passwords will stop being allowed, almost ever, so you probably have nothing to fear. Maybe you can throw that comment back in my face in 20+ years, heh.
Here’s another counter-point: Google, Apple, et. al already implement proprietary authentication mechanisms. Sign-in prompts on recent devices, email codes, etc. are all proprietary. None of these companies killed passwords despite having implemented the tools to do exactly that with vendor lock-in. All the evidence is the opposite. This is one of the first times we’re even getting an open standard authentication, the exact opposite of “walled garden”.
The same special property that allows rampant attacks on the public. I deal with so many people with compromised email inboxes, malware installs, stolen credentials, etc. Passwords are not the end solution to end user security, and I welcome improvements that also simplify UX.
I think we’ve probably hashed out enough of the sides of the argument. Good luck to you.
Because you appear to be misunderstand what I’m saying. Be careful to not put words in my mouth. I said nothing regarding bans.
I am, however, arguing that a service provider can reject your passkey if they dont like how you manage it, (e.g make it copiable). To access that service using a passkey, you’ll have to accept storing your credential on their terms.
And to be clear, I’m in no way blind to the issues with passwords. We’ve had to tack on a bunch of extras to have password based security keep up, like TOTP, password hashing, recovery methods, phishing resistant tokens, security questions, and so on. I’m not arguing that passwords are perfect; I’m arguing that they preserve the users ultimate control over the credential. I’m totally open and hopeful for improvements to authentication as long as they similarly preserve the user’s freedom to manage their credentials as they see fit.
And this may be where the difference in our values shows, since it appears that you view the user’s freedom as more of a problem than a boon:
I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that, but I simply don’t think some users making mistakes justifies allowing a service provider to remove a critical freedom from the user. I dont believe that improved UX and security has to come at the cost of user freedom, but that’s what passkeys explicitly allow for by design. I fundamentally disagree with that.
Fair enough, I tend to thow it in the same category as “DRM and other gate-keeping technologies” which you did call “tangential.” At the end of the day, for the purposes of my argument, they are the same: a service wishes to exert control over how a client runs, and I object to such limitions broadly speaking. The computers I own work for me, not the service. (Of course this changes in enterprises that own their own clients, like the workstations used by their workforce. But even in those situations, however, I would argue that there are generally more effective measures than remote attestation. But I digress…)
Ah, but how can you be sure? You’re missing the guarentee that they can’t flip the script on you. The standard allows them to start forcing users to rotate their passwords and passkeys for ones that require attestation of their preferred settings. Maybe it’s unlikely, but “unlikely” is still a massive downgrade from “impossible.” IMO, it’s unacceptable.
Just because a standard is open does not mean it isn’t rigged in the favor of closed platforms. This is especially the case with passkeys, where platforms use them to further entrench you into their ecosystem, often under the guise of “look how good the UX is!” For example, MacOS really, really wants you to tie your passkeys to their keychain, so that they can control how it’s backed up, transferred, and stored. Remote attestation only makes this worse, opening the possibility that a service provider can enforce that you have to use MacOS’s keychain. Sounds like a walled garden to me.
Apologies if I miss-stated your point and conflated service’s other arbitrary decisions with what you’re suggesting may happen with passkeys.
Maybe I have one follow-up question, there are a number of websites that just don’t use passwords at all. It’s always one-time codes sent to emails. Where does this fall on your freedom spectrum?
Do you have similar arguments about HTTP 3? QUIC? Web RTC? There’s so many protocols that could be used in a way to lock in users. Just because it has some bits in the schema, doesn’t really mean much. Particularly when it’s actually supplying a very real need in other contexts. Nobody wants 30 versions of passkey-alt protocols.
Cheers
This is the equivalent of Sony arguing that you never owned any games, you owned a license. Congrats. You’re the best kind of correct - technically correct.
There is no flag on a password that determines if it is transferable. There is no amount of “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” that will work out in your favor if you’re not in the majority. If you give corporations the power to limit consumption while increasing prices, they will eventually use it. Especially if they provide a product you can’t get anywhere else (and this is their goal for every product - even if they have to buy other companies to do it - even if they have to collude to offer the same service). It’s the foundation of our entire economic system.
It’s far from that and bad analogies pollute otherwise very simple conversations. If you want a more apt analogy, this “debate” is shaping up closer to LED vs incandescent bulbs.
It’s easy to say passwords are sufficient when you’re one person practicing good op-sec. It’s not when you’re supporting thousands of people of varying technical proficiency, thousands of machines, thousands of services, and thousands of bad-actors. It was an even simpler time when 4 digit PINs were “sufficient”, but the world you and I live in is more complicated. Certain passkeys are transferable, so you’re not even losing out on that capability. Curmudgeon arguments aren’t convincing. Passkeys aren’t “giving power away”. Using passkeys doesn’t mean your giving up freedom. Passkeys have no bearing on the “economic system” and inflation. As far as the IT ecosystem is concerned, we’ve never lived in a more open and capable time. There are so many alternatives to every service (that isn’t tightly coupled to copyright). Of course companies are trying to offer unique products people can’t get anywhere else. None of this has to do with passkeys.
Maybe you’ll prefer more practical criticism then:
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/12/passkey-technology-is-elegant-but-its-most-definitely-not-usable-security/
To put it simply, every passkey is locked into a large combination of factors: device + platform (OS) + app + the service being used. It is not trivial and often downright impossible to change any of these factors or to render them agnostic. This makes it complicated or impossible to backup passkeys or make them portable.
It’s fine for them to not be portable when they’re used on a work phone, running the company mandated OS, authentication app and passkey store, to login into a suite of apps that are also company-approved.
I do need portability and backup as an individual who wants to be able to login into multiple services across multiple apps running on multiple OS on multiple devices. But I can’t, because the big tech players (Microsoft/Google/Apple etc.) are actively trying to capture passkeys into their platforms and make it hard to get out in any practical way.
With passwords and TOTP I can run something that will sync them across devices and fill them in into any app in a unified manner (or use copy & paste if all else fails). With passkeys I can’t.
Passkeys can be transferrable and syncable ( see keepassx, bitwarden, and relatives). But ideally, eventually, you never sync them because every time you log into a service with a new device, that device gets its own passkey. No need to sync them and you can revoke a devices access if it is lost or stolen without effecting any other device. They are closer to client certs than passwords in that respect.
FWIW, the article may be a bit outdated. I’m not a FIDO expert by any means, but there have been improvements in the spec to help define how to transfer passkeys (CXF and CXP). The situation should be better than 2024, but if you’re using TPM-locked passkeys, you’re just in that locked box already.
I think there’s somewhat of a conflation of concerns. It sounds like your concern is, I have a credential manager and want to migrate to a new credential manager. I just want it to be simple to migrate my massive number of passwords, right? I need to bulk export + bulk import. EASY. But… what if your first password manager has a bug in the seed generator? Oops, you have to rotate 500 passwords now… there is no easy, off the shelf solution for that. It’s basically the same for hardware-bound passkeys. If you generate hardware-bound passkeys, you’re not going to simply replicate them to another hardware-bound passkey. The whole purpose of that type of credential, is to make it hardware-bound. There are a lot of meaningful reasons to do that from a security POV.
Now, I think what probably needs to be made clearer, is that if you do want that kind of credential, you shouldn’t be using TPM-backed passkeys. You should be purchasing independent hardware (FIDO2 hardware keys) or only make software+transferable passkeys. Personally, I have several hardware keys and I register them with one being a backup. If the vendor posts a vulnerability notice that there’s some big gap in their hardware, I will have to go and rotate every passkey. I know that is what I am signing up for, but maybe not a lot of people do.
No. My concern is that I want to choose my own credential manager, and I want it to work with any passkey usage out there. And that’s impossible.
Which credential manager, and which service is not working with it? Just looking for an example to understand what you’re struggling with. I feel like I don’t have these problems heh.
What do you mean, which. All of them have this problem. You can’t force any platform owner to use your favorite credential storage when they decide they don’t want to. All of them will tell you “for my services you use my storage, period”.
Literally just name a service that forces this. If it’s all of them, it should be pretty easy.
OK, Apple. How do I use passkeys created on iOS for accessing Apple services, on a Linux laptop?
I’ve personally refused to use Apple for decades because of their walled-garden, and it sounds like I’ll continue to follow that principle, heh. But that also has nothing to do with Passkeys, and everything to do with whatever Apple is doing. So I guess, you got me there, Apple sucks.
I will say, I am able to deploy FIDO2 for SSO on Apple devices just fine with both Microsoft Intune and Jamf. But that’s not really Apple’s Passkey vault.
Cheers
I haven’t found this to be the case in practice (IE passkeys are plenty portable). I’ve successfully used passkeys on multiple browsers, OS’s, and apps, all stored using a FOSS password manager (keepass). Any FOSS password manager that is either self-hosted, or syncs, should work just as well with passkeys as it does for regular passwords or TOTP.
My issue with passkeys is the fallback. For instance, when the biometric fails, you can use a fallback login. That’s fine (and good that it exists). But the fallback for me is a pin number. That pin is far less secure than my password or a randomized TOTP number.
How do you handle that for your setup?
Yeah good question, and more people should give consideration to account recovery. Are you referring to recovery PINs? There’s really a couple aspects to the design:
They are single use – this is really just to make sure users aren’t coming to rely on these PINs. It’s also a simple fact that passwords that are typed are more likely to be leaked than passwords that are never typed. Single-use do a great job taking advantage of that.
They lock after very few attempts and generally have more aggressive anti-hammering/brute force/backoff protection than password/TOTP attempts.
They help get new devices registered without already having a passkey.
Securing/backing them up has the same challenges as TOTP secrets management. Storing them in a password manager is what I generally do, but there are a few that warrant keeping offline completely and storing it in a fire-resistant/water-proof enclosure.
The other reliable recovery is just registering several passkeys and keeping one as the recovery credential. I always issue two hardware keys per employee, and we have a pretty lax policy if more are needed or replaced. We also don’t allow employees to recover their own accounts. If we’re at that situation, we need to know in order to help. And FWIW, I don’t use biometrics.
My background is very much not in this world so caveat my questions/response below with that mind set. I do however try to practice decent personal opsec such 2fa (TOTP), password manager with random generation, etc.
I feel like a lot of what you stated was covered in the article. For example the article states that problem isn’t the number of stakeholders, it’s that none of them are consumer advocacy groups.
I understand that the author maybe leaned on the password sharing example too much but I think that was in an effort to present the material in a friendlier manner to the average reader. The closing statement makes it clear it’s not really about Netflix, etc. The main concern is that attested passkey requirement will now be the easiest way to force specific software and hardware upon user. The GraphenOS example is a good one.
You might not use the attested flag in that manner but I have zero doubt that once passkey adoption rate passes a certain threshold Google will be more than glad to miss-use that flag to lock people out of their gmail account unless they have the most recent phone and software.
I think this is a bad take. “Because this potential is not being misused right now it won’t be a problem in the future” has not really served us well thus far.
My understanding is that the article is saying that passkeys are giving away too much control to the second party. That can and will be abused.
But again, layman’s understanding from my end.
Happy to discuss a few points you’ve brought up.
I would put that more as a curiosity than a red flag. I doubt they were excluding groups, but happy to hear about if they were (e.g. donation minimums or something to that effect). The author actually says that whole paragraph is “notable” – great, noted. I hope that doesn’t mean they were using it as an argument for “Do not use [passkeys]” (the title of the article). FWIW, W3C recommends use of passkeys. EFF has had blog articles for 3+ years suggesting advantages of Passkeys. I also don’t know what a consumer advocacy group would suggest differently here – DONT implement an attestation spec? Attestation is a massive improvement for specific types of security.
I went and looked for what you were referring to and didn’t find anything. What do you mean by this? I use GrapheneOS. I use passkeys. Google being hostile to third party OS doesn’t seem related but maybe I am missing something.
Well this seems like a reasonable point I should expand on. Maybe I can plant a seed of doubt about this hypothesis. A few comments:
People being locked out of their email is actually one of the biggest logistical nightmares for email providers. Proving someone is who they say they are is actually fairly difficult as well as doing it at scale. People lock themselves out of their own email. People get locked out of their email because of phishing attacks. In practice, Passkeys reduce phishing rates significantly. That’s a massive win for email providers in reducing their burden. Intentionally locking out a massive number of their customers is an unthinkably bad move, comically bad. It wouldn’t happen.
Email is the most important mechanism of communication for people’s security. Bank and financial accounts, paid services, government notices… they are almost all through email. The idea that they will vendor-lock email to specific hardware… it’s not realistic. They would face such massive PR And public blowback. Email is also accessed from more than just your phone. “Requiring” an attested phone would kill a massive use case.
People already feel locked to their email provider – it’s extremely difficult to change all contacts you have to a new email address. Passkeys don’t change that. Phone hardware doesn’t change that. So I’d say it’s just a continued problem, and not a reason to not use passkeys.
The FIDO Alliance had like three phone manufacturers out of 250 members.
Overall, I don’t see how passkeys, or attestation, could lead to a world where any public service would want to require attestation, and even if they did, there’s no reason it would be “requires my X branded phone”. These companies supported the development of this protocol for the specific reason of NOT wanting to cater to specific vendors. This is a vendor-neutral specification. There are many hardware and software providers. They all have their own motivations, and they hope implementing the spec brings in more customers, improves consumer security, and reduces their operational costs. Do you still have zero doubts about a future world with vendor-locked attested passkeys for public services?
There are already dozens of hardware and software passkey vendors. It’s honestly amazing how little lock-in there is. There’s a half dozen FOSS authn services providing passkey services. You can buy dedicated hardware for passkeys from multiple independent companies. What “control” are you referring to? Companies could always force rotate your password, make it invalid, etc. Any control you thought you had was an illusion.
Cheers
If my passkeys are spread across dozens of vendors I wouldn’t call that good, first of all, it’s just a headache.
Secondly, just because there’s many of them doesn’t mean there’s no lock-in. Can I get my passkeys out? Can I migrate them freely between any vendors? Can I take backups for myself from all the vendors? Can I restore the backups into each vendor? Can I replace those vendors with a self-hosted solution?
You’re picking what vendor you want, not picking unique vendors for every unique passkey.
It depends. It sounds like you just don’t like or want hardware-locked/TPM passkeys. If you generate that type of passkey, then no you can’t do much of that. Maybe your major complaint is that some major OS’s default to hardware-bound passkeys?
My reference to “vendor” meant to include self-hosted/FOSS solutions.
I don’t get to pick anything, in fact. Most often you’re told “that’s how it is, that’s where the passkey goes” and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Again, _I_ typically don’t get to make that choice, it’s being made for me. And that’s a problem.
I replied to someone else asking the same thing, but we can avoid this infinite-universe syndrome. Which service is forcing a specific passkey provider, and doesn’t offer alternatives? I just need an example to understand because I don’t know of any and I have been using passkeys for awhile, so I’d appreciate being informed.
Thanks.
Thanks.