Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them

Note that attestation can only be required during credential registration; at login time it's not possible to retroactively require attestation if it wasn't obtained during registration. And browsers will throw up a permission prompt if a website requests attestation. Are Netflix and Twitter currently requesting attestation when people register passkeys, and rejecting the registration if the user declines the permission prompt? I very much doubt it, since Apple's passkey implementation doesn't support attestation.

Therefore, the author's scenario that sites will wait until most of their users are using attested passkeys and then "flip the switch and start rejecting non-attested passkeys" isn't very plausible.

Attestation is certainly a stain on the WebAuthn spec, and it would have been better if Chrome and Firefox didn't support attestation (unless perhaps the browser is enrolled in enterprise management), but this blog post is presenting a hypothetical and unlikely scenario. That's not a good enough reason to recommend TOTP instead, given that TOTP is vulnerable to phishing and passkeys aren't.

If consumer-facing sites start requesting attestation when registering passkeys, they deserve to be vigorously called out, and maybe then the recommendation to use passkeys should be revisited. But until that happens, don't tell people not to use passkeys.

The very last thing, past the conclusion, the very last footnote is:

> Addendum: I feel I have made a compelling case for passkeys in this article. And I haven’t even pointed out one of their best security features: they are (in most use cases) domain-bound, meaning they are resistant to what are called Man-In-The-Middle attacks.

"I made a compelling case... but didn't point out the most important security feature that motivated passkeys in the first place"

Honestly I don't think this post did make a compelling case. There's a lot of assuming bad faith on the part of the FIDO alliance, while completely missing that preventing MITM attacks was a key design feature. The FIDO alliance members deal with stolen accounts all the time, and passkeys largely solve that. Stealing accounts is almost always done with phishing or social engineering, and passkeys solve the former and reduce the surface for the latter.

I've yet to voluntarily enable passkeys, for the main reason that I want portability, and not to be tied to any single device that can be lost. I want to be able to backup and lock my credentials in a safe. I also want to control the strength of my credentials for different services, and I don't consider my thumbprint used to unlock my phone to be as strong as a long password in a password manager.

The first time I was forced to use a passkey implemented within the vendor's app (3rd party password managers were not an option). I quickly closed that account.

The second time was an app that popped up a passkey opt-in in the middle of a bunch of transaction screens. I quickly realized the error, but there was no easy undo. The opt in was one green button in the middle of the screen. Turning it back off required digging through settings to find the security option to disable, and then confirm my choice multiple times. That process also signed out all my other devices.

The fact that companies are resorting to dark patterns and forced requirements, where my money is held hostage, should be pretty good evidence of how poorly the passkey rollout is going.

I love passkeys. 1Password handles them beautifully.

This is a (very long and) well-written treatise against passkeys in their common and disparate forms. It's worth reading, and brings up several interesting and often concerning points.

I don't agree with the conclusion, though.

TOTP is great, flexible, and keeps the user in control; however, using a passkey in a flexible password manager (Bitwarden, keepass, 1Password, etc) really does continue to give the user control. And the user experience is dramatically easier than filling in TOTP codes.

To advocate for TOTP over passkeys, we're already relying on an application to generate those numbers (authenticator apps, password managers, etc). I see no reason to not simply continue using those pieces of software to manage passkeys, too.

I don’t know if it’s productive for me to talk about how a headline is off-putting, but I’m going to mention it because, well, it’s a headline, and a headline is a strong first impression.

Is the audience of this article the kind of people who are already using passkeys and like them? Because, if so, we’re starting at a deficit here. The author is out to get my beloved passkeys that have saved me so much time and pain.

Are passkeys perfect? No. Are they even very good for no-technical users? Absolutely not…they’re incredibly confusing for that kind of person if you ask me.

However, for my workflow, I’ll take them over a password+2FA type of situation where logging in is such an annoyance. The security part of the discussion is very interesting and a lot of the things in this article are stuff that I didn’t know before reading it.

The issue is that, putting on my user hat, I just don’t care. As long as my accounts are reasonably secure I’m much more concerned about ease of use and workflow.

TOTP is susceptible to man in the middle attacks. Passkeys are not. That alone is a solid reason to favor Passkeys!

I’m an advocate for passkeys and I abolished passwords and embraced discoverable passkeys for our org’s key internal systems exclusively. So the battle cry of a title immediately put me on the defensive, unfortunately. The urge to not read is strong. A more measured title may help here.

But there’s definitely a kernel of truth here. 1Password recently began to enforce userVerification: required[1][2], and suddenly on the desktop without TouchID I have to enter my login password to use the passkey on a good number of websites. I didn’t sign up for 1Password 15 years ago so that I have to enter both my very complex master password and very complex login password to sign into websites, the “one password” contract is suddenly broken after 15 years. This experience independently alarmed me about the additional constraints potential of the passkey standard and power wielded by the FIDO Alliance and partnering organizations addressed in TFA, which are, to be clear, useful for security in an organization. (We use userVerification: preferred now btw.)

Therefore, I believe the passkey technology is great for enforcing a standard of security in an organization and stand by my choice for my org. But as a general purpose B2C auth tech, if the additional constraints become widely adopted, user freedom will be seriously harmed.

[1] https://web.dev/articles/webauthn-user-verification

[2] https://www.1password.community/1password-at-home-31/user-ve...

Ideally, passkeys should be cattle, not pets. You should have more than one per account, saved to more than one password manager. Then it's fine if they're not copyable because you can get another.

Hard disagree. Phishing is a major problem. Passwords+OTP are phishable[1]--passkeys are not (the signature is bound to the domain and cannot be forwarded). That alone makes passkeys worthwhile for the vast vast majority of consumers. This is not a theoretical threat model. You simply cannot realistically expect even a savvy consumer to be able to save themselves from phishing all the time. One mistake and they are fucked.

If you write a long article about the merit of passkeys and there is no occurrence of the string "phish" in your article, I am afraid I cannot take your rant seriously.

Again, this stuff is not merely theoretical. YubiKeys have been a thing at Google and other major tech companies for almost two decades now and the effects are well-studied.

[1]: I have found for some weird reason, this is often overlooked and misunderstood in the industry. People even know about SIM swaps and stuff like that, but don't realize OTP is not phishing-proof.

Passkeys make it feel like the site is trying to get more info about me; it seems harder to maintain multiple accounts with passkeys. They feel worse for anonymity than a password where you know exactly what you're pasting into the site.

Although this isn't true because actually with a password you have to choose how to generate it and everyone chooses different ways.

Knowing how big tech works this will get forced down throats desired or not

I've been complaining about passkeys for a long time and it was driving me crazy that it seemed to be the one thing that Big Tech, tech-savvy people, and normies were all on the same page about. The recent PR push a few months back was overwhelming.

Passkeys in theory are great, but the capabilities of the spec are worrying. Defaults can and do change, and when they do, so follows 99% of the population, and then you find yourself either getting blocked out of services because your hardware/software doesn't comply, or you give in.

But on the other end, it might not matter anyways. Apple, Google, Cloudflare, are already pushing similar garbage and now you increasingly have to scan a QR code that verifies your mobile hardware to use a desktop.

Can someone tell why the whole standard for authentication on the web is not just this:

me: Can you show me my stuff?

website: HTTP 401, who are you? I understand EasyAuth 1.0, if that is good for you.

me: Sure, here's my EasyAuth 1.0: Hi <website>, I'm <user_id>. The time is <timestamp>. Signed, <digital_signature>.

I tried using a passkey to log in to something and it gave me an error and I simply didn't care about trying to fix it. So passwords it is for me.

> What’s important to know is that unlike with any other kind of login credential, you do not have ultimate control over your passkeys.

Use proper password managers, like keepassxc. Then you have control. But problem is that not all sites support that. If you can't use the above - then yes, passkeys are bad, especially if they become mandatory.