this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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A lot of services support passkeys. Microsoft even has an option to make my account "passwordless". Since they are more secure than passwords, will you be switching some / most of your accounts to passkeys any time soon? Interested to hear everyone's thoughts on passkeys. ๐Ÿ”‘

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[โ€“] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Passkeys as password replacements reduce the total factors required to login to a service. If you use 2fa for all your services anyway then passkeys are a downgrade. That's why so many people are angry they are having security options removed.

For people who use the same username and password everywhere, then passkeys are a upgrade.

So normal people get a benefit from passkeys in exchange for getting locked into a ecosystem.

For security minded people I hate passkeys.

  • Less factors to login
  • Discoverable
    • Unlike fido2 webauthn the service the credentials attach to have to be known, so if anyone steals your hardware key, or gets access to your phone they can see all the passkeys and accounts you have

I WANT my logins to be something I know, something I have, and something I am. Password, hardware key, biometric unlock of key.

I don't mind passkeys existing, but I HATE that services are replacing hardware key flows with passkey flows. I want to use my hardware key as fido2 not as a passkey. I don't want to downgrade my security! Microsoft makes it impossible to use a 2fa hardware key as a second factor now, only as a passkey, that's strictly worse then before.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

To be fair, there is a "something you know" factor - the passphrase for the database containing the passkeys. But I kinda do wish they were more easily password-protected individually, like how you do with SSH keys. You can have a separate database for each passkey I guess... But yea, inconvenient.

[โ€“] darkstar 2 points 2 weeks ago

100% agree. I have 2FA on everything, passkeys are definitely a downgrade