They really aren’t a trap. They’re a well designed standard. The tooling around them isn’t quite perfect yet, but they’re a huge improvement over passwords.
People upvote because big tech has a tendency of forcing the most anti ownership outcome possible on everyone. Here, such an outcome likely would be mandatory passkeys that are set up to require hardware attestation.
One way to reduce that risk is to boycott passkeys until TPM and hardware attestation are removed from the standard. You may not think that’s a fair response, or that such a boycott won’t save us from the inevitable outcome, but nevertheless it’s not a completely irrational reaction.
This is the article that converted me into a TPM hater: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html (And SystemD hater, since Lennard Poettering was employed by Microsoft for a while, the ones that control the TPM default signatures, and now apparently tries to get Linux to use secure boot signing everywhere. Very suspicious.)
Like, yeah, GNU/FSF tend to be radical with many opinions and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I feel like this article has a point.
And also until the committee designing it has it members on it representing the interests of users. The point that this was lacking in the original is-a-trap article is an important one and is also being missed.
I’m just not convinced that mandatory hardware attestation is actually a real problem we need to worry about.
Like, yes, people with high security jobs will have that for sure. And they should.
But large companies that want customers? They want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to connect. They’re not going to force people to have a hardware device which if damaged or lost will lose them a customer. That’s just not what they want.
Embrace, extend, extinguish as in literally every single corporate case. Thousands of rug pulls later and we still haven’t learned our lesson.
In this case: first get people in the door en masse, then expand the requirements for things like hardware attestation in a transition period, then vendor lock people.
Adobe would never move to cloud only, that would lose them customers.
See: Literally every single API rug pull ever. Reddit, Unity, etc… Get people using the API and infrastructure, then switch from free to huge fees.
See: cloud companies giving good deals for storage and then charging massive fees for output bandwidth to access or move that data
See: VMware rug pull
This is the exact same except they are telling us what they are going to do from the start. When someone tells you how shitty they are, listen.
But large companies that want customers? They want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to connect. They’re not going to force people to have a hardware device which if damaged or lost will lose them a customer. That’s just not what they want.
The TPM exists because it’s useful to support use cases where you want your passkeys tied to a device. It isn’t a Microsoft thing either. I run Linux - my computer has a TPM. I can’t use it because Linux support for the TPM is weak still, but it’s there! You probably have one too if your computer was made in the last decade.
By default, even on Windows, your website passkeys aren’t stored in the TPM. No one is forcing you to store your passkeys on the TPM.
And they won’t, because it’s a bloody stupid idea that benefits no one.
Microsoft wants your passkeys synced across devices because that’s how you get lock in. If the passkeys are stuck on the computer you made them on, then you may as well buy a Mac for your next computer because those passkeys are gone either way! If the passkeys are in Microsoft Password Manager though, now migrating to a Mac is harder.
I only dislike the ability for service providers to enforce a “security level”. Those should be the exclusively under my (the user) control. Sending preferred default (hints) would be cool, but not enforcement.
That a webpage can basically prevent me from using a passkey if the passkey is stored in software (a password manager for example) is complete bullshit. Especially if there is still username/password as alternative which is clearly worse. Sure, hardware tokens are the ultimate security. But it should be up to me and not them if I want that level of security.
But they already do enforce a “security level” for passwords through minimum character counts (e.g. must be at least 8 characters long), specific character requirements (e.g. at least one upper case + lower case + number), rotation schedules (e.g. must be changed every 90 days), etc. Some even enforce password sharing (e.g. Netflix IP/geolocation checks).
Yeah and certain password requirements are also dumb. But at least they still give me a degree of freedom how to generate the password and how I store the password.
Second factor is sometimes worse than Passkeys; with vendor specific apps (Steam Guard, Blizzard Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, etc) instead of following standard TOTP. But still. I want agency over my credentials.
I fucking love passkeys. I hate 2FA on every god damn website, but clearly the majority of people are too lazy/stupid for passwords alone to work in a time when phishing is so widespread. My only problem with them was that I couldn’t use my Bitwarden passkeys in Firefox for Android, but they fixed that, and I’ve never had a bad experience with a passkey since.
This has actually been a really good discussion on both sides as I think many including myself didn’t know about some of the inner workings of them. I’m glad the discussion happened. The trap article IS worth a read, it’s overly long but is really well written. After reading enough about both sides though I don’t think I’m too worried and will continue using them.
I’ve honestly not seen any benefits over passwords.
If I want to check my mail on a library computer, I can type in a password and I’m in. If it’s using passkeys I need an already logged-in smartphone - which I probably don’t have if I need that library computer in the first place. That’s just one example.
Personally I like Passkeys, and I enroll them in both my KeePassXC vault and on my two hardware keys (a primary Yubikey which I carry with me and a spare one at home).
It doesn’t absolve one from neglecting proper security best practices (don’t login on a system you don’t trust, logout / clear cookies when done, etc), but a Passkey on a hardware key is much more difficult to phish or extract if you’re using someone else’s computer.
You’ve likely got dozens of accounts. You’re not going to memorize a password for every account. Re-using passwords is a serious security problem though. Poorly secured sites get their password databases leaked all the time. If you use the same password on lots of sites, it’s basically a sure thing that the hashes are out there on the darkweb already along with your email, and your password is compromised.
Also, typing your email password into an unsecured library computer is a terrible idea. It is ridiculously easy for someone to install a keylogger and gather emails and passwords. In the past, your main protection was that it wasn’t worth anyone’s time to break into the computers, install keyloggers, collect lists of passwords, then figure out how to use them to get money. But with LLMs that can all be automated. It has become ridiculously cheap, and can be done by someone with a bot farm in Russia.
A password manager largely fixes the first problem, but at that point you need a device with your password manager with you to log in anyway. And the password manager doesn’t fix the second problem at all.
Well if your using a pasword manger instead of easily remmbered passwords your screwed either way. And considering the fast majority of people use the same password eveywhere and use a simple passowrd they are a big improvement.
I would say the people hate it, because they are exposed to the tooling and not the standard.
The standard might be the best there is, if the tooling is shit people won’t use it. And once you’ve been exposed to bad tools you make the connection between tools bad = passkey bad because they don’t know there’s a difference…
They really aren’t a trap. They’re a well designed standard. The tooling around them isn’t quite perfect yet, but they’re a huge improvement over passwords.
People upvote because they hate change.
People upvote because big tech has a tendency of forcing the most anti ownership outcome possible on everyone. Here, such an outcome likely would be mandatory passkeys that are set up to require hardware attestation.
One way to reduce that risk is to boycott passkeys until TPM and hardware attestation are removed from the standard. You may not think that’s a fair response, or that such a boycott won’t save us from the inevitable outcome, but nevertheless it’s not a completely irrational reaction.
This is what people seem to be missing, I haven’t seen a rebuttal to this problem.
This is the article that converted me into a TPM hater: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html (And SystemD hater, since Lennard Poettering was employed by Microsoft for a while, the ones that control the TPM default signatures, and now apparently tries to get Linux to use secure boot signing everywhere. Very suspicious.)
Like, yeah, GNU/FSF tend to be radical with many opinions and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I feel like this article has a point.
And also until the committee designing it has it members on it representing the interests of users. The point that this was lacking in the original is-a-trap article is an important one and is also being missed.
I’m just not convinced that mandatory hardware attestation is actually a real problem we need to worry about.
Like, yes, people with high security jobs will have that for sure. And they should.
But large companies that want customers? They want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to connect. They’re not going to force people to have a hardware device which if damaged or lost will lose them a customer. That’s just not what they want.
And yet, it’s there.
Embrace, extend, extinguish as in literally every single corporate case. Thousands of rug pulls later and we still haven’t learned our lesson.
In this case: first get people in the door en masse, then expand the requirements for things like hardware attestation in a transition period, then vendor lock people.
Adobe would never move to cloud only, that would lose them customers.
See: Literally every single API rug pull ever. Reddit, Unity, etc… Get people using the API and infrastructure, then switch from free to huge fees.
See: cloud companies giving good deals for storage and then charging massive fees for output bandwidth to access or move that data
See: VMware rug pull
This is the exact same except they are telling us what they are going to do from the start. When someone tells you how shitty they are, listen.
I would say this is already proven to be wrong, since Microsoft Windows appears to be already doing exactly that with the special hardware device “TPM”: https://rossmanngroup.com/services/encrypted-data-recovery/bitlocker …in regular customer machines.
The TPM exists because it’s useful to support use cases where you want your passkeys tied to a device. It isn’t a Microsoft thing either. I run Linux - my computer has a TPM. I can’t use it because Linux support for the TPM is weak still, but it’s there! You probably have one too if your computer was made in the last decade.
By default, even on Windows, your website passkeys aren’t stored in the TPM. No one is forcing you to store your passkeys on the TPM.
And they won’t, because it’s a bloody stupid idea that benefits no one.
Microsoft wants your passkeys synced across devices because that’s how you get lock in. If the passkeys are stuck on the computer you made them on, then you may as well buy a Mac for your next computer because those passkeys are gone either way! If the passkeys are in Microsoft Password Manager though, now migrating to a Mac is harder.
Oh I know I have a TPM, yes. I blacklist all the Linux TPM modules though. Screw that thing.
I only dislike the ability for service providers to enforce a “security level”. Those should be the exclusively under my (the user) control. Sending preferred default (hints) would be cool, but not enforcement.
That a webpage can basically prevent me from using a passkey if the passkey is stored in software (a password manager for example) is complete bullshit. Especially if there is still username/password as alternative which is clearly worse. Sure, hardware tokens are the ultimate security. But it should be up to me and not them if I want that level of security.
But they already do enforce a “security level” for passwords through minimum character counts (e.g. must be at least 8 characters long), specific character requirements (e.g. at least one upper case + lower case + number), rotation schedules (e.g. must be changed every 90 days), etc. Some even enforce password sharing (e.g. Netflix IP/geolocation checks).
Yeah and certain password requirements are also dumb. But at least they still give me a degree of freedom how to generate the password and how I store the password.
Second factor is sometimes worse than Passkeys; with vendor specific apps (Steam Guard, Blizzard Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, etc) instead of following standard TOTP. But still. I want agency over my credentials.
I fucking love passkeys. I hate 2FA on every god damn website, but clearly the majority of people are too lazy/stupid for passwords alone to work in a time when phishing is so widespread. My only problem with them was that I couldn’t use my Bitwarden passkeys in Firefox for Android, but they fixed that, and I’ve never had a bad experience with a passkey since.
This has actually been a really good discussion on both sides as I think many including myself didn’t know about some of the inner workings of them. I’m glad the discussion happened. The trap article IS worth a read, it’s overly long but is really well written. After reading enough about both sides though I don’t think I’m too worried and will continue using them.
I’ve honestly not seen any benefits over passwords.
If I want to check my mail on a library computer, I can type in a password and I’m in. If it’s using passkeys I need an already logged-in smartphone - which I probably don’t have if I need that library computer in the first place. That’s just one example.
Personally I like Passkeys, and I enroll them in both my KeePassXC vault and on my two hardware keys (a primary Yubikey which I carry with me and a spare one at home).
It doesn’t absolve one from neglecting proper security best practices (don’t login on a system you don’t trust, logout / clear cookies when done, etc), but a Passkey on a hardware key is much more difficult to phish or extract if you’re using someone else’s computer.
Memorizing passwords doesn’t scale well.
You’ve likely got dozens of accounts. You’re not going to memorize a password for every account. Re-using passwords is a serious security problem though. Poorly secured sites get their password databases leaked all the time. If you use the same password on lots of sites, it’s basically a sure thing that the hashes are out there on the darkweb already along with your email, and your password is compromised.
Also, typing your email password into an unsecured library computer is a terrible idea. It is ridiculously easy for someone to install a keylogger and gather emails and passwords. In the past, your main protection was that it wasn’t worth anyone’s time to break into the computers, install keyloggers, collect lists of passwords, then figure out how to use them to get money. But with LLMs that can all be automated. It has become ridiculously cheap, and can be done by someone with a bot farm in Russia.
A password manager largely fixes the first problem, but at that point you need a device with your password manager with you to log in anyway. And the password manager doesn’t fix the second problem at all.
Well if your using a pasword manger instead of easily remmbered passwords your screwed either way. And considering the fast majority of people use the same password eveywhere and use a simple passowrd they are a big improvement.
I would say the people hate it, because they are exposed to the tooling and not the standard.
The standard might be the best there is, if the tooling is shit people won’t use it. And once you’ve been exposed to bad tools you make the connection between tools bad = passkey bad because they don’t know there’s a difference…