> You're one zero-day browser crack away from revealing your private key. You're still better off than any password scheme, which is often attacked from the se

> You're one zero-day browser crack away from revealing your private key. You're still better off than any password scheme, which is often attacked from the server side. And the lovely thing about the PKI method is that you can invest as much or as little as you want into protecting the private key and have the server not care even a little. On the weak end is the unprotected private key file on your hard drive, followed by a private key that's passphrase-protected (and even with this, there's a spectrum of configurable behavior governing how long it stays decrypted), followed by private keys on a physical device, followed by a physical device that requires two-factor access.