this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Privacy
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I personally like it. Imo passkeys should optimally be device bound and the private keys should be stored in TPM or equivalent and be non-exportable.
Well, nothing is stopping you to keep passkeys only in one place, why force others to do what you like? Now we have options and less friction to switch to a competitor. Which results in more competition and that results in better products. Well theoretically..
I just don't think synced passkeys should be the default for example iOS.
What Microsoft is doing with device-bound passkeys using Windows Hello is imo great.
So microsoft does not require that you backup your passkeys? I thought that was the norm in all OS 😅
I think that passkeys are backed up in cloud by default isn’t that bad for the average person, since they are likely not understanding passkeys (at least right now) and don’t get that they loose access to accounts, if they disable oldscool Passwords only use one passkey on one device for that account.
You usually don't lose access though. Passkeys rarely replace passwords so you could still use your password or reset it if you don't remember it.
That is, because we are in transition phase, the goal is that passkey replace the less secure method, else you gain only a very little more security than only Password .
When most sites refer to passkeys, they're typically talking about the software-backed kind that are stored in password managers or browsers. There are still device-bound passkeys though. Also since they're just FIDO/WebAuthn credentials under the hood, you can still use hardware-backed systems to store them if you really want.
While you're right that device bound and non-exportable would be best from a security standpoint, there needs to be sufficient adoption of the tech by sites for it to be usable at all and sufficient adoption requires users to have options that have less friction/cost associated with them, like browser and password-manager based ones.
Looking at it through the lens of replacing passwords instead of building the absolutely highest-security system helps explain why they're not limited to device-bound anymore.