21 ms·

Passkeys and Modern Authentication

187 points by Bogdanp 1y ago

bmandale 1y ago
> An attempt by an open source password manager to provide export of private keys was ruled insecure and should not be supported. The name of the issue reveals the actual problem: "should never be exported in clear text". If the export was encrypted with a passphrase in a standard format, then there would be no issue. It's specifically doing it in plain text that causes consternation. Of course, in practice it doesn't make much of a difference when users are incapable of choosing secure passwords, let alone passphrases. But requiring exports to be encrypted is the least one can do to maintain a degree of security while still allowing exports. > For many years already, people lose access to their Google account every day and can never regain it. Google is well known for terminating accounts without stating any reasons. With that comes the loss of access to your data. In this case, you also lose your credentials for third-party websites. In practice this is frequently already true. Many sites require an email to sign up. Whenever you attempt to log in on a new device, they require you to type in a code sent to your email. Without access to your email, you cannot sign in.
- tuckerman 1y ago
  Where is the line exactly though? If the password manager put up a big red notice when trying to export in plain text is that enough? If not, why not? I am sympathetic to the intent but the words of Patrick Henry come to mind too often in conversations like these. I love passkeys and appreciate secure defaults but I feel strongly that user freedom is a more fundamental requirement than preventing phishing attacks.
  - AndrewDucker 1y ago
    Because many end users will ignore that. And this technology is set up to prevent end users from hurting themselves, even if that constrains technologically capable ones.
    - tuckerman 1y ago
      My values are such that it’s inappropriate for a few folks at companies and random consortiums to make that decision on behalf of all society. If KeepassXC wanted to enforce that world view for the safety of their users, it’s their right, but this is essentially a threat of blacklisting an entire password manager for adding a feature demanded by their users (who likely predominantly used by technically savvy users at that).
      - palata 1y ago
        > but this is essentially a threat of blacklisting an entire password manager I don't think they could blacklist the entire password manager. They can't prevent it from giving you a username/password... Refusing some passkeys is, to me, similar to refusing passwords that are too short. It may make sense to only accept passkeys backed by a secure element. Companies already force their employees to use a specific MFA app, because they don't want to trust any app out there.
        tuckerman 1y ago
        What if websites start adopting passkey-only with instead of offering a username/password option? We could live in a world where services are inaccessible unless you use Google/Apple/1Password/etc as your password manager
        palata 1y ago
        > We could live in a world where services are inaccessible unless you use Google/Apple/1Password/etc as your password manager If services want to force you to use whatever authentication they want, they can. That's what already happens with any service that is serious about security. In big companies, you have to use their authenticator app, their mail client, their messaging system, etc. Often it's Microsoft software. Banks have their own systems, etc. Now, if a service allows you to use a passkey instead of their own 2FA app, I'd say it's a win. I'm happier using a security key than a Microsoft authenticator. But if they give up on using their own app, they may well set conditions on the passkey you use. And that condition may be "it has to be backed by a trusted secure element". You won't be able to use a passkey that's deemed unsecure just like right now, you already are not able to just use a weak password with some services. Again, I'm not saying that being forced to depend on TooBigTech is not a problem: it very much is. But nothing says that services have to do it with passkeys: they could (and should) also accept secure passkeys that don't come from TooBigTech. But they still have a say in what they find secure or not, and that part is okay.
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  But requiring exports to be encrypted is the least one can do to maintain a degree of security while still allowing exports. Why is the protocol dictating the user's security model? I can see why particular applications wouldn't choose to support insecure exports (and would even agree with that), but I genuinely don't understand why the protocol is dictating that an application can't allow users the freedom to choose their own security model. The same issue exists with HSTS, which I've found infuriating when the system is obviously wrong and I have to resort to absurd workarounds as a user because the application is handicapped from giving me an "ignore this" button. Moreover, "just" password protecting a file isn't allowed by the draft CXP standard (https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxp-v1.0-wd-20241003.html#sctn-response-modes https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxp-v1.0-wd-20241003.html#...), you have to use a HPKE scheme where the key exchange is manually orchestrated by the user to export offline. I get it from a security perspective, but that's stupid.
  - tadfisher 1y ago
    The other side of this is the Relying Party, a.k.a. the website operator that is relying on the user's password manager to be decently secure and resistant to phishing. Otherwise, why ditch passwords plus 2FA?
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      The website already has guarantees against phishing because those are enforced by the managers. What's prevented is the snooping case of taking an export and cloning it without the exporting manager being involved. This is essentially indistinguishable from many legitimate use cases like archival or access to deceased relatives' credentials, which users might want regardless of the website's preferences.
      - tadfisher 1y ago
        > The website already has guarantees against phishing because those are enforced by the managers. There is no such guarantee if credential-stealing malware can export your private key material in plaintext!
- NoGravitas 1y ago
  The spec participant here is also saying that encrypting your export file is a "temporary minimum". Personally, I think that requiring a passphrase for some standard symmetric encryption on the export is fine. Plenty of free and privacy-preserving apps I use (Signal, Aegis) do this. The real issue is that there is no guarantee over the medium term that even this will continue to be allowed.
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
> there is effectively no way to export private keys between authentication password managers No exporting really is a feature. Otherwise people would be tricked into giving away passkeys much like they are with passwords today. You can always register multiple passkeys with providers though. Already have a passkey with google but want another one via a different password/account manager? Just go into settings on google and add it! This is effectively how you’re meant to move passkeys around. Create a new and register that with the same services as the old one. The real hassle right now is remembering all the services you attached your current passkey to so you can register a new passkey with them and it’d be nice if there was something similar to ninite installer for passkey registration. But still it's not a huge blocker. You can absolutely use multiple passkeys and login with any one of them.
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  Just made the same comment, weird that its an unpopular opinion. Chalk it up to a UX issue around user expectations.
  - AlexandrB 1y ago
    It's not just that. There's a huge lack of trust with the tech industry. I don't think anyone trusts tech companies to act in the user's best interests with this kind of restriction instead of using it to drive more platform or service lock-in.
    - palata 1y ago
      I get the lack of trust with TooBigTech, but I personally use passkeys with security keys (Yubikeys). WebAuthn is just a bunch of protocols that can run independently from TooBigTech.
      - recursive 1y ago
        It's hard for more people to verify whether this is actually independent from big tech. With a password, you can write it on a piece of paper. You can then type it back in. If any character doesn't match, it doesn't work. This seems like a trustworthy demonstration that it is actually independent. Passkeys have too much magic to understand in this way.
ezfe 1y ago
The Passwords app in macOS 26 and iOS 26 support exporting passkeys to other password managers.
- skybrian 1y ago
  It’s been announced but there’s no release date yet, in case anyone is wondering why they don’t have it.
  - ezfe 1y ago
    The export/import function is present in the public beta
  - hbn 1y ago
    iOS 26 and macOS 26 will likely be released this month or next.
alphazard 1y ago
Unfortunately the tech community is full of people who pride themselves on being aware of and advocating for the latest standard put out by whatever company. That's how we end up with lots of complicated nonsense like most of what is sent in HTTP headers, or the contents of a TLS certificate. On the topic of authentication, it's solved. SSH nailed it, any further complexity is strictly worse. Signing up is uploading a public key. Signing in is cryptographically signing a commitment to the current ephemeral tunnel.
- shreddit 1y ago
  Unfortunately the tech community is full of people who pride themselves on speaking for everyone and telling everyone to stop having fun with new tech because their solution is the best. And the one only truth.
- yomismoaqui 1y ago
  All developers pass this magpie phase [1] and as you get older you start to see new things more critically. I guess a desirable trait of seniority is to balance the urge to play with new toys vs the feeling that sometimes we are running in circles, repeating the same mistakes with different tech. [1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-magpie-developer/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-magpie-developer/
  - skybrian 1y ago
    I’ll add that eventually it’s less about what I want and more about what would work for other people I know. Many of them aren’t very technical. What do you need to do to keep family from (a) not getting locked out and (b) not getting phished?
  - palata 1y ago
    Are you trying to say that security keys are not a good thing? I love security keys, that's my one example of a good technology.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
seany 1y ago
Exporting passkeys is the single required feature for me to start using them more. The "anti phishing" push has really gotten a little too crazy. It seems mostly related to our legal inability to push security responsibility onto consumers.
- EbNar 1y ago
  >Exporting passkeys is the single required feature for me to start using them more. Ditto
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  Given that you don't strictly need to have one passkey per site, is this desire to move passkeys around a holdover from wanting to "export" your passwords? Because if you can export them, an exploit can too. I find passkeys rather more interesting when they cannot be exported from a HSM / key enclave / yubikey, but of course I need to be able to register multiple yubikeys per site, and a few of my accounts didn't allow for this so I ended up using my yubikey for TOTP since I can have the same seed on multiple devices.
  - tuckerman 1y ago
    Export is a good check against lock in. I just went through my password manager and I have 60 passkeys. It would be a huge pain if I have to switch to a different password manager and there isn't export/import.
  - recursive 1y ago
    You should be allowed to keep your passkeys in such enclave. But there seems to be no alternative. I'm in the same boat as the GP. I'm not touching passkeys unless and until I can export them into a file I can get my grubby hands on. I'm guessing that's never happening. Not sure what one-passkey-per-site has to do with it.
  - mgulick 1y ago
    My keepass database has around 400 different entries in it. If I needed to transfer to a new password manager, it's not feasible to go around to 400 different sites to register new passkeys. In case one might say the answer to that is oauth, I'm also not interested in putting my faith in Google/Microsoft/Apple being benevolent arbiters of my ability to access my accounts.
juancn 1y ago
Signing into my accounts on my children’s devices has turned from a straightforward process to an incredibly frustrating experience. I find myself juggling all kinds of different apps and flows. This strikes home for me, I'm the main gatekeeper of passwords and service accounts in my home. 2FA and passkeys are so annoying to juggle. My kids use prepaid numbers, once I changed one and forgot to tell Apple, when I realized that I needed the old number later, it took me a month at least to get it back. I really like passwords, the security risks are well known and really easy to handle compared to 2FA and all that crap, specially when 99% of your accounts are not sensitive enough to merit anything fancy.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Passwords are a weak authentication mechanism and incur liability. MFA is good, Passkeys are better. One time passwords via email are tolerable, still better than passwords. (customer identity and access management is a component of my work at a fintech)
  - cuu508 1y ago
    Security-wise, passkeys are worse than username/password plus WebAuthn as the second factor.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      But better than username/password + TOTP, and username/password + WebAuthn had really low uptake.
      - AlexandrB 1y ago
        Username/password + TOTP is still better than username/password + one time email, no? Especially since the latter creates additional dependencies/risks for the user in the form of an email account.
        tptacek 1y ago
bradley13 1y ago
This. All of this. Passkeys are a great idea, but the walled gardens are a huge problem. Also, services placing additional requirements (e.g., attestations) that potentially violate your privacy and anonymity. Just now, at least in Europe, there is a huge push to force users to authenticate themselves with their actual identity, even for ordinary Internet services. This is happening simultaneously in many countries (including non-EU countries like Switzerland). It almost has to be a coordinated effort....driven by whom? Passkeys play into this. Call me paranoid...
- unsnap_biceps 1y ago
  The walls are going to come down. KeyPassX supports passkeys and allows you to export them as you wish. 1Password and Apple Passwords have both said they're going to support exporting and importing of passkeys. Yes, it's awful during the transition period while the tech matures, but there is a path towards a great future.
  - akazantsev 1y ago
    > KeyPassX supports passkeys and allows you to export them as you wish. The last time I tried to use passkeys, the desktop was easy. What about mobile? There wasn't a local third-party password manager that could work with passkeys on Android.
    - lurking_swe 1y ago
      > There wasn't a local third-party password manager that could work with passkeys on Android. sounds like you found yourself a market opportunity…
      - akazantsev 1y ago
        The only thing I found is that I'm entirely disinterested in passkeys for the next 5 years.
    - unsnap_biceps 1y ago
dan-robertson 1y ago
> Obviously, one could pay for an authenticator like 1Password, which at least is ecosystem independent. However, not everybody is in a situation where they can afford to pay for basic services like password managers This argument was made in the context of moving out of the Apple ecosystem (are there other ecosystems one would want to leave where the only option is paying for something like 1password?). I don’t really buy it because I can’t work out a situation where one is switching from some expensive ecosystem but unable to pay a low fee for 1password. But maybe I’m missing an example.
- Dr4kn 1y ago
  There is also keepass, which you can sync with whatever free cloud storage you want. It might not be the nicest password manager you can use, but you can always use it for free. Bitwardens free tier is also generous enough that a lot of people won't have to pay
  - dan-robertson 1y ago
    Seems like the existence of keypass does not support the argument made in the OP.
  - NoGravitas 1y ago
    KeePassXC has been repeatedly threatened with blacklisting by the WebAuthn alliance. Once for allowing exports of passkeys, once for not requiring reauthentication of an already unlocked vault when providing a passkey.
- the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
  > This argument was made in the context of moving out of the Apple ecosystem Author here. Insert your favorite ecosystem in that people currently have. If you have a windows 11 computer you end up with Windows Hello passkeys for free. If you have a Chromebook then it will be something else. Apple devices show up in low income households somewhat regularly where I live because of subsidized iPads for education.
- kbelder 1y ago
dan-robertson 1y ago
What do security professionals think about passkeys? In particular, those who were not involved in designing them. Lots of the arguments in this article feel very much like the sort of thing one would expect from someone into open source (not saying they are wrong, and I think they are well explained here) but I feel they will inevitably be the product of different concerns than those a security practitioner might have.
- tptacek 1y ago
  Security people are generally pretty positive on Passkeys. Eliminating passwords has been the white whale of information security for over 3 decades. Practitioners are generally positive about FIDO2 (Yubikeys are fetish objects for them). I think message board people would probably be surprised at security practitioner attitudes towards Apple and Google authentication lock-in (locking my team into Google authentication would be one of my first moves at a new firm, and that's not an idiosyncrasy of mine so much as me doing what other CISO-types all say they do).
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - NoGravitas 1y ago
    > I think message board people would probably be surprised at security practitioner attitudes towards Apple and Google authentication lock-in We're not surprised, but I think many of us are horrified. I think it's a culture clash, partly between Free Software and Enterprise communities, partly between developers and security professionals. Given that it's a culture clash, I don't actually see any resolution that will make everyone happy.
    - hooverd 1y ago
      Many security professionals suffer from a horrible case of Boyscoutism where they think snuffing out freedoms is okay because bad people will never be doing the snuffing out.
- 1y ago
jcmontx 1y ago
One day Authy for desktop was deprecated and all of a sudden I was forced to always have my smartphone with me, which I was struggling to replace with a dumbphone. To this day, I have no way out of owning an smartphone for this very reason
- psanford 1y ago
  I assume you were using Authy desktop for TOTP? You don't need a smartphone for storing TOTP seeds or generating TOTP codes.
  - jcmontx 1y ago
    Indeed, but I have like 40 different cloud providers, social networks and SaaS' which would be a pain to migrate
    - dwedge 1y ago
      It's worth doing specifically because you can't be sure twilio won't do a second rug pull for mobile
    - palata 1y ago
      I understand, but 40 doesn't sound too bad. When I moved from gmail to my custom domain, I had more than that to migrate. I just did it one at a time over a few months. Same when I got my Yubikeys: I gradually moved the OTP seeds to them, wasn't that painful.
- cuu508 1y ago
  Are there many sites that only support Authy's push authentication and nothing else?
  - jcmontx 1y ago
    No, not really, it's about migrating/restoring every single 2FA key would be extremely inconvenient
dmfdmf 1y ago
I think that now that IPV6 has 2^128 addresses that some of these can be assigned to individuals as a unique ID, maybe at birth like SSN. It could serve as the base of a public key and secret private key blockchain system controlled by the individual or his trusted agent in some kind of identifier/authenticator system. If properly implemented it could serve as an anonymous ID and age verification system on the internet which seems to be coming soon in a not-so anonymous form to a fascist, commie or authoritarian govt near you, i.e. all of them as current events now show. I don't know if that would work but it is an interesting idea to me. However, it also illustrates that authentication and protecting user identity on the web without sacrificing anonymity is a _political_ problem not a technical problem. I have always been told that when thinking about security you have to define what threat are you trying to protect yourself from. I see discussions on security and virtually all of them ignore that the govt or govt controlled corps (i.e. fascism) is a much bigger threat to individuals and freedom than so called "hackers" or "terrorists" and other boogie men, etc.
shmerl 1y ago
> One slightly more concerning issue today is that there is effectively no way to export private keys between authentication password managers Not being able to use the passkey manager at all is a bigger concern. For example Keepassxc works with some sites but not with others. It's super annoying and way worse than situation with passwords.
- ewoodrich 1y ago
  I use Bitwarden and have never had issues saving or using passkeys with any site I can recall via the Chrome extension.
  - shmerl 1y ago
    Well, see here: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10374 https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10374 I'm pretty sure a lot of this stuff are arbitrary decisions that sites make when they implement passkey support and you never know where it will work. Also some sites likely don't care about fixing it since they think they deliberately are "improving security" or they just don't care. So I'd say it's an ugly mess. I wish it would work though.
8cvor6j844qw_d6 1y ago
Personally I like the idea of passkeys. However, it needs some sort of easy to export like 2FA seeds, or even BIP39 that some cryptocurrency wallets uses. The seemingly non-transparent (or was there none?) way to backup to a cold storage (e.g., printed and locked in a physical safe) turns me off. --- > lack of identifying passkey provider attestation (which would allow RPs to block you, and something that I have previously rallied against but rethinking as of late because of these situations). [1] There is a possibility websites will only allow approved password managers to create/interact with passkeys with attestation, something that is not a problem with the common TOTP + Password or other authentication methods. Attestation (perhaps targeted for enterprise usage?) but should be a separate spec/extension or something. [1]: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#issuecomment-1994673954 https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#iss...
- palata 1y ago
  > Personally I like the idea of passkeys. However, it needs some sort of easy to export Some passkey implementations can be exported (synced), some can't. By design. E.g. I don't want my Yubikeys to export the private keys, ever.
apitman 1y ago
> This is the mechanism by which the Austrian government, for instance, prevents you from using an Open Source or any other software-based authenticator to sign in to do your taxes, access medical records or do anything else that is protected by eID. Instead you have to buy a whitelisted hardware token. When the time comes to support passkeys on my services, I think I might use attestation in the other direction, ie only offer passkeys to users if I detect they are using a cross-platform password manager like Bitwarden or 1Password. There are simply too many moving pieces (including ad-hoc Bluetooth connections!) to guarantee a good UX when trying to move between the big tech implementations.
loughnane 1y ago
I created my first passkey today using bitwarden. After digging around I saw I'm not able to see the keys (ie like I can in ~/.ssh). I won't do it anymore until I have some way to see them, otherwise I'm essentially locked in, no?
hbogert 1y ago
I was totally bummed out that despite buying a industry leader's product, a yubikey; I can't use it as a passkey through NFC on android[1]. It's simply not supported, wth. How can this work as a 2FA through NFC, but not as a passkey. It's easy to get into conspiracy theory mode, but this really feels like there's mixed incentives as Google wants to push their vendored passkey implementation. [1]: https://developers.yubico.com/Developer_Program/WebAuthn_Starter_Kit/Browser_Support_Matrix.html#_use_case_support https://developers.yubico.com/Developer_Program/WebAuthn_Sta...
smagin 1y ago
Like the take that we need to authentificate more often nowadays. AWS makes it extreme — it resets login each 12 hours I reckon, and each time I need to click like 10 times, touch the fingerprint button 3 times (fill email, fill password, passkey), and I fail to imagine how it's not a security theater.
raxxorraxor 1y ago
Passkeys are worthless if you cannot create a backup. This poses as a blatant risk to security that is often neglected to be mentioned. I guess this is purely due to attestation ambitions of companies. So, yes, username + password or more generally a secret known only to you is superior.
mertleee 1y ago
I honestly have no understanding of why people thought passkeys really improved anything... Why would I want to give a massive tech company the ability to usurp ALL of my accounts under the guise of being "more secure".
BrandoElFollito 1y ago
I am a security professional and I have an obsession about authentication (along other obsessions). While I understand and love passkeys, I spend so much time and WTFs on trying to get a passkey for some accounts (that say "what about using a passkey instrad" and omit to say how the fuck to make one), or tell me to connect with a passkey I have no idea where it is. This is sooo frustrating. And then I have to explain it to my wife pretending that everything is under control while she suspiciously look at me for yet another annoyance I put on her.

187 points by Bogdanp 1y ago

> An attempt by an open source password manager to provide export of private keys was ruled insecure and should not be supported. The name of the issue reveals the actual problem: "should never be exported in clear text". If the export was encrypted with a passphrase in a standard format, then there would be no issue. It's specifically doing it in plain text that causes consternation. Of course, in practice it doesn't make much of a difference when users are incapable of choosing secure passwords, let alone passphrases. But requiring exports to be encrypted is the least one can do to maintain a degree of security while still allowing exports. > For many years already, people lose access to their Google account every day and can never regain it. Google is well known for terminating accounts without stating any reasons. With that comes the loss of access to your data. In this case, you also lose your credentials for third-party websites. In practice this is frequently already true. Many sites require an email to sign up. Whenever you attempt to log in on a new device, they require you to type in a code sent to your email. Without access to your email, you cannot sign in.

tuckerman 1y ago
Where is the line exactly though? If the password manager put up a big red notice when trying to export in plain text is that enough? If not, why not? I am sympathetic to the intent but the words of Patrick Henry come to mind too often in conversations like these. I love passkeys and appreciate secure defaults but I feel strongly that user freedom is a more fundamental requirement than preventing phishing attacks.
- AndrewDucker 1y ago
  Because many end users will ignore that. And this technology is set up to prevent end users from hurting themselves, even if that constrains technologically capable ones.
  - tuckerman 1y ago
    My values are such that it’s inappropriate for a few folks at companies and random consortiums to make that decision on behalf of all society. If KeepassXC wanted to enforce that world view for the safety of their users, it’s their right, but this is essentially a threat of blacklisting an entire password manager for adding a feature demanded by their users (who likely predominantly used by technically savvy users at that).
    - palata 1y ago
      > but this is essentially a threat of blacklisting an entire password manager I don't think they could blacklist the entire password manager. They can't prevent it from giving you a username/password... Refusing some passkeys is, to me, similar to refusing passwords that are too short. It may make sense to only accept passkeys backed by a secure element. Companies already force their employees to use a specific MFA app, because they don't want to trust any app out there.
      - tuckerman 1y ago
        What if websites start adopting passkey-only with instead of offering a username/password option? We could live in a world where services are inaccessible unless you use Google/Apple/1Password/etc as your password manager
        palata 1y ago
        > We could live in a world where services are inaccessible unless you use Google/Apple/1Password/etc as your password manager If services want to force you to use whatever authentication they want, they can. That's what already happens with any service that is serious about security. In big companies, you have to use their authenticator app, their mail client, their messaging system, etc. Often it's Microsoft software. Banks have their own systems, etc. Now, if a service allows you to use a passkey instead of their own 2FA app, I'd say it's a win. I'm happier using a security key than a Microsoft authenticator. But if they give up on using their own app, they may well set conditions on the passkey you use. And that condition may be "it has to be backed by a trusted secure element". You won't be able to use a passkey that's deemed unsecure just like right now, you already are not able to just use a weak password with some services. Again, I'm not saying that being forced to depend on TooBigTech is not a problem: it very much is. But nothing says that services have to do it with passkeys: they could (and should) also accept secure passkeys that don't come from TooBigTech. But they still have a say in what they find secure or not, and that part is okay.
AlotOfReading 1y ago
But requiring exports to be encrypted is the least one can do to maintain a degree of security while still allowing exports. Why is the protocol dictating the user's security model? I can see why particular applications wouldn't choose to support insecure exports (and would even agree with that), but I genuinely don't understand why the protocol is dictating that an application can't allow users the freedom to choose their own security model. The same issue exists with HSTS, which I've found infuriating when the system is obviously wrong and I have to resort to absurd workarounds as a user because the application is handicapped from giving me an "ignore this" button. Moreover, "just" password protecting a file isn't allowed by the draft CXP standard (https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxp-v1.0-wd-20241003.html#sctn-response-modes https://fidoalliance.org/specs/cx/cxp-v1.0-wd-20241003.html#...), you have to use a HPKE scheme where the key exchange is manually orchestrated by the user to export offline. I get it from a security perspective, but that's stupid.
- tadfisher 1y ago
  The other side of this is the Relying Party, a.k.a. the website operator that is relying on the user's password manager to be decently secure and resistant to phishing. Otherwise, why ditch passwords plus 2FA?
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    The website already has guarantees against phishing because those are enforced by the managers. What's prevented is the snooping case of taking an export and cloning it without the exporting manager being involved. This is essentially indistinguishable from many legitimate use cases like archival or access to deceased relatives' credentials, which users might want regardless of the website's preferences.
    - tadfisher 1y ago
      > The website already has guarantees against phishing because those are enforced by the managers. There is no such guarantee if credential-stealing malware can export your private key material in plaintext!
NoGravitas 1y ago
The spec participant here is also saying that encrypting your export file is a "temporary minimum". Personally, I think that requiring a passphrase for some standard symmetric encryption on the export is fine. Plenty of free and privacy-preserving apps I use (Signal, Aegis) do this. The real issue is that there is no guarantee over the medium term that even this will continue to be allowed.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

> there is effectively no way to export private keys between authentication password managers No exporting really is a feature. Otherwise people would be tricked into giving away passkeys much like they are with passwords today. You can always register multiple passkeys with providers though. Already have a passkey with google but want another one via a different password/account manager? Just go into settings on google and add it! This is effectively how you’re meant to move passkeys around. Create a new and register that with the same services as the old one. The real hassle right now is remembering all the services you attached your current passkey to so you can register a new passkey with them and it’d be nice if there was something similar to ninite installer for passkey registration. But still it's not a huge blocker. You can absolutely use multiple passkeys and login with any one of them.

jazzyjackson 1y ago
Just made the same comment, weird that its an unpopular opinion. Chalk it up to a UX issue around user expectations.
- AlexandrB 1y ago
  It's not just that. There's a huge lack of trust with the tech industry. I don't think anyone trusts tech companies to act in the user's best interests with this kind of restriction instead of using it to drive more platform or service lock-in.
  - palata 1y ago
    I get the lack of trust with TooBigTech, but I personally use passkeys with security keys (Yubikeys). WebAuthn is just a bunch of protocols that can run independently from TooBigTech.
    - recursive 1y ago
      It's hard for more people to verify whether this is actually independent from big tech. With a password, you can write it on a piece of paper. You can then type it back in. If any character doesn't match, it doesn't work. This seems like a trustworthy demonstration that it is actually independent. Passkeys have too much magic to understand in this way.

ezfe 1y ago

The Passwords app in macOS 26 and iOS 26 support exporting passkeys to other password managers.

skybrian 1y ago
It’s been announced but there’s no release date yet, in case anyone is wondering why they don’t have it.
- ezfe 1y ago
  The export/import function is present in the public beta
- hbn 1y ago
  iOS 26 and macOS 26 will likely be released this month or next.

alphazard 1y ago

Unfortunately the tech community is full of people who pride themselves on being aware of and advocating for the latest standard put out by whatever company. That's how we end up with lots of complicated nonsense like most of what is sent in HTTP headers, or the contents of a TLS certificate. On the topic of authentication, it's solved. SSH nailed it, any further complexity is strictly worse. Signing up is uploading a public key. Signing in is cryptographically signing a commitment to the current ephemeral tunnel.

shreddit 1y ago
Unfortunately the tech community is full of people who pride themselves on speaking for everyone and telling everyone to stop having fun with new tech because their solution is the best. And the one only truth.
yomismoaqui 1y ago
All developers pass this magpie phase [1] and as you get older you start to see new things more critically. I guess a desirable trait of seniority is to balance the urge to play with new toys vs the feeling that sometimes we are running in circles, repeating the same mistakes with different tech. [1]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-magpie-developer/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-magpie-developer/
- skybrian 1y ago
  I’ll add that eventually it’s less about what I want and more about what would work for other people I know. Many of them aren’t very technical. What do you need to do to keep family from (a) not getting locked out and (b) not getting phished?
- palata 1y ago
  Are you trying to say that security keys are not a good thing? I love security keys, that's my one example of a good technology.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

seany 1y ago

Exporting passkeys is the single required feature for me to start using them more. The "anti phishing" push has really gotten a little too crazy. It seems mostly related to our legal inability to push security responsibility onto consumers.

EbNar 1y ago
>Exporting passkeys is the single required feature for me to start using them more. Ditto
jazzyjackson 1y ago
Given that you don't strictly need to have one passkey per site, is this desire to move passkeys around a holdover from wanting to "export" your passwords? Because if you can export them, an exploit can too. I find passkeys rather more interesting when they cannot be exported from a HSM / key enclave / yubikey, but of course I need to be able to register multiple yubikeys per site, and a few of my accounts didn't allow for this so I ended up using my yubikey for TOTP since I can have the same seed on multiple devices.
- tuckerman 1y ago
  Export is a good check against lock in. I just went through my password manager and I have 60 passkeys. It would be a huge pain if I have to switch to a different password manager and there isn't export/import.
- recursive 1y ago
  You should be allowed to keep your passkeys in such enclave. But there seems to be no alternative. I'm in the same boat as the GP. I'm not touching passkeys unless and until I can export them into a file I can get my grubby hands on. I'm guessing that's never happening. Not sure what one-passkey-per-site has to do with it.
- mgulick 1y ago
  My keepass database has around 400 different entries in it. If I needed to transfer to a new password manager, it's not feasible to go around to 400 different sites to register new passkeys. In case one might say the answer to that is oauth, I'm also not interested in putting my faith in Google/Microsoft/Apple being benevolent arbiters of my ability to access my accounts.

juancn 1y ago

Signing into my accounts on my children’s devices has turned from a straightforward process to an incredibly frustrating experience. I find myself juggling all kinds of different apps and flows. This strikes home for me, I'm the main gatekeeper of passwords and service accounts in my home. 2FA and passkeys are so annoying to juggle. My kids use prepaid numbers, once I changed one and forgot to tell Apple, when I realized that I needed the old number later, it took me a month at least to get it back. I really like passwords, the security risks are well known and really easy to handle compared to 2FA and all that crap, specially when 99% of your accounts are not sensitive enough to merit anything fancy.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Passwords are a weak authentication mechanism and incur liability. MFA is good, Passkeys are better. One time passwords via email are tolerable, still better than passwords. (customer identity and access management is a component of my work at a fintech)
- cuu508 1y ago
  Security-wise, passkeys are worse than username/password plus WebAuthn as the second factor.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    But better than username/password + TOTP, and username/password + WebAuthn had really low uptake.
    - AlexandrB 1y ago
      Username/password + TOTP is still better than username/password + one time email, no? Especially since the latter creates additional dependencies/risks for the user in the form of an email account.
      - tptacek 1y ago

bradley13 1y ago

This. All of this. Passkeys are a great idea, but the walled gardens are a huge problem. Also, services placing additional requirements (e.g., attestations) that potentially violate your privacy and anonymity. Just now, at least in Europe, there is a huge push to force users to authenticate themselves with their actual identity, even for ordinary Internet services. This is happening simultaneously in many countries (including non-EU countries like Switzerland). It almost has to be a coordinated effort....driven by whom? Passkeys play into this. Call me paranoid...

unsnap_biceps 1y ago
The walls are going to come down. KeyPassX supports passkeys and allows you to export them as you wish. 1Password and Apple Passwords have both said they're going to support exporting and importing of passkeys. Yes, it's awful during the transition period while the tech matures, but there is a path towards a great future.
- akazantsev 1y ago
  > KeyPassX supports passkeys and allows you to export them as you wish. The last time I tried to use passkeys, the desktop was easy. What about mobile? There wasn't a local third-party password manager that could work with passkeys on Android.
  - lurking_swe 1y ago
    > There wasn't a local third-party password manager that could work with passkeys on Android. sounds like you found yourself a market opportunity…
    - akazantsev 1y ago
      The only thing I found is that I'm entirely disinterested in passkeys for the next 5 years.
  - unsnap_biceps 1y ago

dan-robertson 1y ago

> Obviously, one could pay for an authenticator like 1Password, which at least is ecosystem independent. However, not everybody is in a situation where they can afford to pay for basic services like password managers This argument was made in the context of moving out of the Apple ecosystem (are there other ecosystems one would want to leave where the only option is paying for something like 1password?). I don’t really buy it because I can’t work out a situation where one is switching from some expensive ecosystem but unable to pay a low fee for 1password. But maybe I’m missing an example.

Dr4kn 1y ago
There is also keepass, which you can sync with whatever free cloud storage you want. It might not be the nicest password manager you can use, but you can always use it for free. Bitwardens free tier is also generous enough that a lot of people won't have to pay
- dan-robertson 1y ago
  Seems like the existence of keypass does not support the argument made in the OP.
- NoGravitas 1y ago
  KeePassXC has been repeatedly threatened with blacklisting by the WebAuthn alliance. Once for allowing exports of passkeys, once for not requiring reauthentication of an already unlocked vault when providing a passkey.
the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
> This argument was made in the context of moving out of the Apple ecosystem Author here. Insert your favorite ecosystem in that people currently have. If you have a windows 11 computer you end up with Windows Hello passkeys for free. If you have a Chromebook then it will be something else. Apple devices show up in low income households somewhat regularly where I live because of subsidized iPads for education.
kbelder 1y ago

dan-robertson 1y ago

What do security professionals think about passkeys? In particular, those who were not involved in designing them. Lots of the arguments in this article feel very much like the sort of thing one would expect from someone into open source (not saying they are wrong, and I think they are well explained here) but I feel they will inevitably be the product of different concerns than those a security practitioner might have.

tptacek 1y ago
Security people are generally pretty positive on Passkeys. Eliminating passwords has been the white whale of information security for over 3 decades. Practitioners are generally positive about FIDO2 (Yubikeys are fetish objects for them). I think message board people would probably be surprised at security practitioner attitudes towards Apple and Google authentication lock-in (locking my team into Google authentication would be one of my first moves at a new firm, and that's not an idiosyncrasy of mine so much as me doing what other CISO-types all say they do).
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- NoGravitas 1y ago
  > I think message board people would probably be surprised at security practitioner attitudes towards Apple and Google authentication lock-in We're not surprised, but I think many of us are horrified. I think it's a culture clash, partly between Free Software and Enterprise communities, partly between developers and security professionals. Given that it's a culture clash, I don't actually see any resolution that will make everyone happy.
  - hooverd 1y ago
    Many security professionals suffer from a horrible case of Boyscoutism where they think snuffing out freedoms is okay because bad people will never be doing the snuffing out.
1y ago

jcmontx 1y ago

One day Authy for desktop was deprecated and all of a sudden I was forced to always have my smartphone with me, which I was struggling to replace with a dumbphone. To this day, I have no way out of owning an smartphone for this very reason

psanford 1y ago
I assume you were using Authy desktop for TOTP? You don't need a smartphone for storing TOTP seeds or generating TOTP codes.
- jcmontx 1y ago
  Indeed, but I have like 40 different cloud providers, social networks and SaaS' which would be a pain to migrate
  - dwedge 1y ago
    It's worth doing specifically because you can't be sure twilio won't do a second rug pull for mobile
  - palata 1y ago
    I understand, but 40 doesn't sound too bad. When I moved from gmail to my custom domain, I had more than that to migrate. I just did it one at a time over a few months. Same when I got my Yubikeys: I gradually moved the OTP seeds to them, wasn't that painful.
cuu508 1y ago
Are there many sites that only support Authy's push authentication and nothing else?
- jcmontx 1y ago
  No, not really, it's about migrating/restoring every single 2FA key would be extremely inconvenient

dmfdmf 1y ago

I think that now that IPV6 has 2^128 addresses that some of these can be assigned to individuals as a unique ID, maybe at birth like SSN. It could serve as the base of a public key and secret private key blockchain system controlled by the individual or his trusted agent in some kind of identifier/authenticator system. If properly implemented it could serve as an anonymous ID and age verification system on the internet which seems to be coming soon in a not-so anonymous form to a fascist, commie or authoritarian govt near you, i.e. all of them as current events now show. I don't know if that would work but it is an interesting idea to me. However, it also illustrates that authentication and protecting user identity on the web without sacrificing anonymity is a _political_ problem not a technical problem. I have always been told that when thinking about security you have to define what threat are you trying to protect yourself from. I see discussions on security and virtually all of them ignore that the govt or govt controlled corps (i.e. fascism) is a much bigger threat to individuals and freedom than so called "hackers" or "terrorists" and other boogie men, etc.

shmerl 1y ago

> One slightly more concerning issue today is that there is effectively no way to export private keys between authentication password managers Not being able to use the passkey manager at all is a bigger concern. For example Keepassxc works with some sites but not with others. It's super annoying and way worse than situation with passwords.

ewoodrich 1y ago
I use Bitwarden and have never had issues saving or using passkeys with any site I can recall via the Chrome extension.
- shmerl 1y ago
  Well, see here: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10374 https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10374 I'm pretty sure a lot of this stuff are arbitrary decisions that sites make when they implement passkey support and you never know where it will work. Also some sites likely don't care about fixing it since they think they deliberately are "improving security" or they just don't care. So I'd say it's an ugly mess. I wish it would work though.

8cvor6j844qw_d6 1y ago

Personally I like the idea of passkeys. However, it needs some sort of easy to export like 2FA seeds, or even BIP39 that some cryptocurrency wallets uses. The seemingly non-transparent (or was there none?) way to backup to a cold storage (e.g., printed and locked in a physical safe) turns me off. --- > lack of identifying passkey provider attestation (which would allow RPs to block you, and something that I have previously rallied against but rethinking as of late because of these situations). [1] There is a possibility websites will only allow approved password managers to create/interact with passkeys with attestation, something that is not a problem with the common TOTP + Password or other authentication methods. Attestation (perhaps targeted for enterprise usage?) but should be a separate spec/extension or something. [1]: https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#issuecomment-1994673954 https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#iss...

palata 1y ago
> Personally I like the idea of passkeys. However, it needs some sort of easy to export Some passkey implementations can be exported (synced), some can't. By design. E.g. I don't want my Yubikeys to export the private keys, ever.

apitman 1y ago

> This is the mechanism by which the Austrian government, for instance, prevents you from using an Open Source or any other software-based authenticator to sign in to do your taxes, access medical records or do anything else that is protected by eID. Instead you have to buy a whitelisted hardware token. When the time comes to support passkeys on my services, I think I might use attestation in the other direction, ie only offer passkeys to users if I detect they are using a cross-platform password manager like Bitwarden or 1Password. There are simply too many moving pieces (including ad-hoc Bluetooth connections!) to guarantee a good UX when trying to move between the big tech implementations.

loughnane 1y ago

I created my first passkey today using bitwarden. After digging around I saw I'm not able to see the keys (ie like I can in ~/.ssh). I won't do it anymore until I have some way to see them, otherwise I'm essentially locked in, no?

hbogert 1y ago

I was totally bummed out that despite buying a industry leader's product, a yubikey; I can't use it as a passkey through NFC on android[1]. It's simply not supported, wth. How can this work as a 2FA through NFC, but not as a passkey. It's easy to get into conspiracy theory mode, but this really feels like there's mixed incentives as Google wants to push their vendored passkey implementation. [1]: https://developers.yubico.com/Developer_Program/WebAuthn_Starter_Kit/Browser_Support_Matrix.html#_use_case_support https://developers.yubico.com/Developer_Program/WebAuthn_Sta...

smagin 1y ago

Like the take that we need to authentificate more often nowadays. AWS makes it extreme — it resets login each 12 hours I reckon, and each time I need to click like 10 times, touch the fingerprint button 3 times (fill email, fill password, passkey), and I fail to imagine how it's not a security theater.

raxxorraxor 1y ago

Passkeys are worthless if you cannot create a backup. This poses as a blatant risk to security that is often neglected to be mentioned. I guess this is purely due to attestation ambitions of companies. So, yes, username + password or more generally a secret known only to you is superior.

mertleee 1y ago

I honestly have no understanding of why people thought passkeys really improved anything... Why would I want to give a massive tech company the ability to usurp ALL of my accounts under the guise of being "more secure".

BrandoElFollito 1y ago

I am a security professional and I have an obsession about authentication (along other obsessions). While I understand and love passkeys, I spend so much time and WTFs on trying to get a passkey for some accounts (that say "what about using a passkey instrad" and omit to say how the fuck to make one), or tell me to connect with a passkey I have no idea where it is. This is sooo frustrating. And then I have to explain it to my wife pretending that everything is under control while she suspiciously look at me for yet another annoyance I put on her.