Typically, no. You’re thinking of TOTP/Authenticator based 2FA. Those still come with backup codes in case you break the phone that has the TOTP codes warehoused. I always recommend keeping those backup codes saved in the notes of whatever password manager you’re hopefully using.
Passkeys are essentially just one half of a cryptographic key pair (like what you’d use for authenticating SSH without passwords). These allow you to authenticate once using password + 2FA, then use the generated passkey for future sessions. Since these are much more complex than passwords and remove the need to actually remember anything, they are significantly more secure.
There are also some other features that I’m forgetting, and that may not be a perfectly accurate description, but I think you can get the gist.
Passkeys are supposed to be bound to one device and protected by that device’s OS’s secure enclave. If you have a second device you’re supposed to create a second passkey.
That’s why many sites will flat out refuse to let you create a passkey with a desktop browser since a PC-stored passkey doesn’t fit the security model.
Websites should not get to dictate my security model. I’ll accept annoying me about being less secure because I get that people are dumb, but you’ve gotta choose somehow! Also, any passkey is safer than a password, so that’s still BS.
The logic behind it is that a smartphone-bound passkey represents two factors of authentication: what you have (the phone) and who you are (the fingerprint used to unlock the phone’s passkey store).
Anything on a PC is easily copied and can only ever be safely assumed to represent one factor: what you know (the password to unlock your password manager). Thus the benefit of getting a two-factor authentication in one convenient step falls away.
Of course it’s still super annoying, especially if you don’t really trust your smartphone OS vendor and use a portable password manager already.
Yeah, that’s how I understood it to work, as well. I didn’t mention it because I’ve seen a bunch of different implementations that don’t seem to work that way. I didn’t want to speak too much on that specific point, since I don’t have a very thorough understanding of it.
Just let me use passkeys at this point. The way that people typically use passwords is less secure anyway, why not just make it as simple as possible?
I would love to use my physical Yubikey, but all the websites I’ve seen that allow passkey login always deny both Yubikeys.
That’s a shame, yubikeys are a really neat tool. I’ve considered picking one up so many times
I forget. Are passkeys the access method that prevents you from logging in ever again if you lose access to a device?
Typically, no. You’re thinking of TOTP/Authenticator based 2FA. Those still come with backup codes in case you break the phone that has the TOTP codes warehoused. I always recommend keeping those backup codes saved in the notes of whatever password manager you’re hopefully using.
Passkeys are essentially just one half of a cryptographic key pair (like what you’d use for authenticating SSH without passwords). These allow you to authenticate once using password + 2FA, then use the generated passkey for future sessions. Since these are much more complex than passwords and remove the need to actually remember anything, they are significantly more secure.
There are also some other features that I’m forgetting, and that may not be a perfectly accurate description, but I think you can get the gist.
Passkeys are supposed to be bound to one device and protected by that device’s OS’s secure enclave. If you have a second device you’re supposed to create a second passkey.
That’s why many sites will flat out refuse to let you create a passkey with a desktop browser since a PC-stored passkey doesn’t fit the security model.
Websites should not get to dictate my security model. I’ll accept annoying me about being less secure because I get that people are dumb, but you’ve gotta choose somehow! Also, any passkey is safer than a password, so that’s still BS.
The logic behind it is that a smartphone-bound passkey represents two factors of authentication: what you have (the phone) and who you are (the fingerprint used to unlock the phone’s passkey store).
Anything on a PC is easily copied and can only ever be safely assumed to represent one factor: what you know (the password to unlock your password manager). Thus the benefit of getting a two-factor authentication in one convenient step falls away.
Of course it’s still super annoying, especially if you don’t really trust your smartphone OS vendor and use a portable password manager already.
Yeah, that’s how I understood it to work, as well. I didn’t mention it because I’ve seen a bunch of different implementations that don’t seem to work that way. I didn’t want to speak too much on that specific point, since I don’t have a very thorough understanding of it.
Only if you use the OS built-in saving.
Most password managers support them at this point, making them portable and secure.
No? My password manager holds them so they are available everywhere…
Yes