logoalt Hacker News

tgma • yesterday at 11:18 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

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.


Replies

kccqzy • yesterday at 11:46 PM

Phishing is a major problem, but it happens less than you think. Password managers are also checking the domain before supplying a saved password. A user who relies on autofilling the password every time will notice when their password manager suddenly does not autofill.

Yubikeys are a great second factor honestly. But do you want to use a Yubikey as a passkey? Sorry you are likely dissatisfied. Many websites and apps (especially apps) support passkeys but would prohibit using your Yubikey as a passkey.

➕ show 1 reply
AlotOfReading • today at 12:02 AM

    YubiKeys have been a thing at Google and other major tech companies for almost two decades now and the effects are well-studied.
My experience is that yubikeys have a tendency to get lost, get cleared, get mixed up (which of my 4 identical yubikeys has the right passkey?), stop working reliably from random USB issues, etc. And worse, yubikeys are awful to use. Like am I seriously supposed to take off my phone case every time I want to plug in a yubikey to the USB-C port (which may or may not be working depending on whether moisture has condensed in the port) so I can use the one mobile browser that supports them to retrieve a passkey every time I want to log in?

No, fuck that. Just let me use an SSH cert at that point. The existence of phishing is a comparatively minor evil.

➕ show 1 reply