alt Hacker NewsNote 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.
Replies
There's also another scenario - annoy most users into using passkeys, then say "well everyone is using passkeys already, we don't need passwords anymore", and _then_ slowly start requiring attestation. Really I'm not one to look for conspiracy theories, but with the recent pushes around e.g. chat control, it's not that far fetched to assume someone pushes for more control over users' accounts
Sorry, bit this is just the standard "boil the frog" playbook that tech companies always use for user-hostile features. It's usually:
1) There is this new entirely optional feature, but it's not relevant to you, so feel free to ignore it.
2) The feature is now active by default, but no worries, there is a simple button for you to opt-out.
3) The feature is active by default, but because we value our users, there is an option in the advanced settings to deactivate it.
4) Our data shows that 99.9% of users activated the feature, but if you belong to the handful of diehards who still refuse to use it (rolls eyes), you can use this obscure command line flag or about:config entry to turn it off
5) Managing opt-out infrastructure for the feature has significant maintenance and security cost that we feel, we can no longer justify. Therefore, effective in three months, the opt-out flags will stop working and the feature will become mandatory. According to our metrics, this will affect 0.0001% of our users, so no disruption is expected.
> at login time it's not possible to retroactively require attestation if it wasn't obtained during registration.
Of course it is, the site will reject the passkey and require you to create one that is attested.
> Are Netflix and Twitter currently requesting attestation when people register passkeys, and rejecting the registration if the user declines the permission prompt?
They could start tomorrow.
> a hypothetical and unlikely scenario.
You have not been paying attention, that scenario is where this whole thing is building towards.
> If consumer-facing sites start requesting attestation when registering passkeys, they deserve to be vigorously called out
It's going to be the banks first.
Why called out, it's all for your safety, to make sure you are not using an insecure client that might leak your data.