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Tarq0ntoday at 3:28 PM3 repliesview on HN

OK now say you're on a work/library/friend's computer and you want to look up an account in 1password on your phone so you can type in the password. Passkeys don't support this very basic and common workflow. Meanwhile there's no real security benefit over password manager generated complex and not reused passwords.


Replies

voxic11today at 6:20 PM

I use a passkey with discord on my phone. If I want to log in to discord on a computer it shows a QR code on the page/desktop app and I scan it with my phone to log in. I could see this become a pretty common pattern.

I like it because I can use discord on even a pretty untrusted computer without providing it any credentials or access to my passkey, and then later when I'm done I can revoke the session.

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iamnotheretoday at 7:10 PM

This is why you should use physical tokens like Yubikey.

But don’t log in to important accounts on a public computer, like ever, unless it’s a dire emergency.

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vel0citytoday at 3:38 PM

If I'm on someone else's computer and I want to use a passkey on my phone, the computer will display a QR code. I scan the QR code with my phone, the phone signs the login request and posts it to the service's callback. Then I'm logged in on that new device.

If my phone's camera is broken but both devices have bluetooth, it can do the handshake over bluetooth.

If I'm on someone else's computer and I want to use a passkey on my authenticator on my keychain, I'll just plug it in and then tap the button on the authenticator.

Meanwhile, if I logged in with the password and the account only has a password then they have a full copy of my entire authenticator to the account. With the passkey, once the session is invalidated the access is gone.

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