this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
280 points (87.8% liked)

Technology

76839 readers
1479 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Passkeys are built on the FIDO2 standard (CTAP2 + WebAuthn standards). They remove the shared secret, stop phishing at the source, and make credential-stuffing useless.

But adoption is still low, and interoperability between Apple, Google, and Microsoft isn’t seamless.

I broke down how passkeys work, their strengths, and what’s still missing

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 33 points 5 days ago (3 children)

You can store Passkeys in open source password managers.

I don't know most of my passwords, so the step to passkeys doesn't feel like a big one. I also really like the flow of pressing Login; Bitwarden pops up a prompt without me initiating it; I press confirm. Done, logged in, and arguably more secure due to the surrounding phishing and shared secrets benefits.

[–] Brokkr@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Sure, they probably work great when you have your *passkey manager on the device, but that's not when I need to have backup routes into my accounts. When using a new device, or someone else's, having even a complicated password that can be typed or copied-pasted has way more functionality.

As far a I can tell, using passkeys would only risk locking me out of my accounts. Everyone else is already effectively locked out.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 11 points 5 days ago

I can access my password manager via the browser from any device.

[–] Vittelius@feddit.org 1 points 4 days ago

You could also use dedicated hardware to store your keys. Any FIDO USB key will do. I have a Yubikey that cost me less than 30 bucks.

It's really handy, because I frequently use someone else's device for work. All I have to do is plug it in, press the button on the key and enter the master password for the passkey storage. It's like having a password manager on a USB stick.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 4 points 5 days ago

I was never prompted to do such a thing. It always just told me to plug in my phone (and even that didn't work).

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah the moods in this thread, like

“[I don’t understand this]!”

“[I don’t trust this]!”

“[It doesn’t fix everything]!”

“[This doesn’t benefit me]!”

“[What’s wrong with old way]!?”

And like, all valid feelings… just the reactions are a bit… intense? Especially considering it’s a beta stage auth option that amounts to a fancy version of the old sec key industry standard, not the mark of the beast.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Because we all know it will eventually go from a "neat" to mandatory with vendor lock-in for no other reason than "fuck you".

We've all seen it a few hundred times now with X, and Y.

I get a few daily pop-ups for "Want to use a pass key". One from my bank. No I don't want to link my fingerprint to my bank account especially in a way that will lock me out when I replace my phone.

Remember folks: Biometrics (What you are) is not constitutionally protected but what you know is (for now at least).

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 4 points 5 days ago

You do not need your fingerprint or any other biometric to use a passkey.

You do not lose access to passkeys when you lose your device.

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 points 4 days ago

If we cut and run every time a big corporation “embraces” a new standard, just to lessen the pain of the day it’s inevitably “extinguished,“ we’d miss out on quite a lot.

This standard was open from the start. It was ours. Big corps sprinted ahead with commercial development, as they do, but just because they’re first to implement doesn’t mean we throw in the towel.

Also:

  1. Bio auth isn’t necessary. It’s just how Google/Apple do things on their phones. It’s not part of the FIDO2 standard.
  2. It works with arbitrary password managers including FLOSS and lots of hardware options.
  3. Passkeys can sync to arbitrary devices, browsers, device bound sessions, whatever.
[–] jabberwock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the FIDO2 standard works. It is not designed to be vendor specific and as other people in this thread point out, plenty of open-source secrets managers and hardware implement passkeys.

What we've seen is the typical Silicon Valley model of "embrace, extend, extinguish" so you're right to be wary of any implementation by Google or Microsoft.

Same goes for biometrics - how you unlock the passkey isn't specified in the standard. It is left up to the implementation. If you don't want to use biometrics, you don't have to.