Ricky Mondello (@rmondello@hachyderm.io)
hachyderm.io
If you actually read the “Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them.” post going around, you’ll find a transparent attempt to clumsily string together a conspiracy. The post is predicated on the idea that a feature of WebAuthn called “attestation”, which is only used in high-assurance and usually corporate scenarios, and usually with physical hardware security keys, will be leveraged to hurt people, somehow. The post posits that a website like X will bait and switch users: first, you get a passkey. Then, later, scary “attested” passkeys! This simply isn’t possible to do because attestation isn’t supported on the web for mass market, consumer authentication. Attestation for passkeys (software-based, syncable credentials) is antithetical to their mass market goals, and would freeze out independent, non-corporate-backed credential managers. It’s an explicit non-goal of the designers of passkeys, who work together in a forum anyone can join. And trust me, websites and apps like banks repeatedly asked for attestation at the beginning of the industry’s passkey journey. The platforms, browsers, and credential management apps have held firm that the goal of passkeys is reducing phishing and **not** some kind of trusted computing scheme. (And I will note: over my dead body!) Besides the theory of the case being fundamentally wrong, there are several things that make the post disqualifying in terms of arguing something useful or important in the realm of security, privacy, and user authentication: 1. Intentionally presenting things that are complicated as inherently suspicious. (Delivering security by design can be complicated, yes!) 2. Describing TOTP as a “great solution” for adding security to a password-based account. When the most common threat model on the web is phishing (a word the post never mentions!), TOTP hardly buys you _anything_. TOTP is phishable. 3. Seeming to be unbothered by how many logical leaps are being taken without actually understanding the topic being discussed. There are bad things happening in tech and untrustworthy people and companies do exist, but they’re largely in the AI space, not the “let’s stop people we love from getting compromised through phishing” space.

A rebuttal to an anti-passkey, pro-TOTP post that has made the rounds on Lemmy as well.

  • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 day ago

    I think you’re mixing up compromise of an account with compromise of the data associated with that account.

    If a particular piece of data is accessible to people of a dozen accounts, compromise of any of those accounts potentially compromises the data. That’s a legitimate concern for people who want certain data secured, whether other accounts with access are also secure. In some cases, it may be best to have an authentication policy that provides a baseline level of protection even for the most clueless users, rather than a system where you’re able to secure your own account.

    • jdr@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 day ago

      I follow you, but if we can impose passkeys on the security-inept people we are forced to give our sensitive data to, couldn’t we instead force them to use good security?

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 day ago

        It’s been like 25 years since the security world basically moved on from assuming that users could be trusted to act securely. We gotta design processes and protocols that keep things secure even with people who have bad habits.

        I can secure my email, but every email I send or receive touches at least one other mailbox I don’t control, of some other user. Same with text messages, social media posts, etc. The digital world we use has a billion overlapping people, some with escalated privileges as employees or admins or mods or whatever. We can’t make them perfect, so we should design systems that work well even with imperfect people.