I appreciate this article. Passkeys kinda came out of nowhere to me and I haven’t liked them since day one. So it’s nice to have my gut feeling vindicated with some actual info.
You know what u don’t like. Fucking xøcode sent to my email or a «magic link».
Srsly fuck off. Let me type my password
One complaint I have is browser insistence that a site must have a proper certificate to work at all.
I provide self hosted software with passkey support and probably over 90 percent of my users never set up property certificates due their private networks. So the passkey function is impossible for them.
Which means they must use passwords. Which are far worse in this scenario. The practical risk either way is arguably low for them, but to take a more mitm/phishing resistant technique and then force it to not work because mitm or phishing might be in play…
One complaint I have is browser insistence that a site must have a proper certificate to work at all.
I provide self hosted software with passkey support and probably over 90 percent of my users never set up property certificates due their private networks. So the passkey function is impossible for them.
Which means they must use passwords. Which are far worse in this scenario. The practical risk either way is arguably low for them, but to take a more mitm/phishing resistant technique and then force it to not work because mitm or phishing might be in play…
That doesn’t make sense, you’re suggesting using security (passkeys) over an insecure channel (HTTP). Even internal websites should use TLS. Am I missing something?
In an ideal world, they would be using TLS with a properly set up CA even for internal.
In practice, I can’t get most of them to do that, and instead they just click through the certificate warning and use it over https, but without certificate assurance.
So it’s still over https, though a fair argument can be made that hardly matters if the certificates aren’t validated, and browser ecosystem doesn’t consider ‘TOFU’ a valid approach like it generally is for SSH.
Anyway, the point is that passkeys are ‘security’ by virtue of not ever divulging the secret on the line. They can’t be sniffed, they can’t be captured by phishing, they can’t be retained for later use after a MITM. So the refusal to operate even with informed user consent means the user just uses a password, which is weak to all those things. In a scenario where it could provide the most mitigation is a scenario where the browsers refuse to let it try. Even the built in password manager will still auto-fill without certificate validation, one of the most risky places to be ‘helpful’.
Yeah, this is the key. Distributing your own cert catalogues on a system level negates this issue. But then also that needs to be managed.
But key signing is essential anyways and I’ve often thought the CA system could be used outside of the client to server signing process.
This isn’t a good article @ouch. It’s dull, meandering and conflates issues.
Both Apple and Google want your identity anchored to their operating systems.
That’s true regardless of passkeys and why is Microsoft excluded here?
Logging into accounts on devices you own is the ideal scenario for passkeys. When you have to handle a colleague’s computer, it gets much more inconvenient. You could plug in a hardware key, but you don’t always have access to the ports.
What sort of drivel is this? Is anyone reading the article? I doubt it. Sorry, I’m not logging into important accounts on a colleague’s computer, regardless of being unable to squat and plug in a usb-dongle. The last statement even concedes that passkeys are an improvement for 99% of the user-population. It’s an improvement for 100% of the user-population. Like usual this is just drivel generated from friction around ‘newness’. It’s different–which automatically becomes scary for some users. The writing is just not coherent and there’s zero critique on passkey’s design and technicalities, of which there are things to criticize.
Get a physical passkey and if you have more than 100 accounts you have a problem. Buy two and use one as a backup in case you lose your first. Keep it in a safe and if you forget your safe’s combination… well, I guess we should abolish safes too: terrible account recovery support there. Yikes!
Passkey’s themselves can be protected with a PIN–the software I’ve used does not limit it to numbers. It can be your ‘master password’ if you want. This is a technical complaint of mine as all software I’ve used reference it as a PIN (personal identification number), which means numbers only. Except other characters are allowed. I’m not sure what the official spec. states.
🎶Security is Theatre🎶
Good article.
Currently passkeys are too much of a vendor lock-in to big tech.
Bitwarden support alone does not change that.
Microsoft 365 implementation of passkeys is sacrilegious somehow.
It requires only the Authenticator app from Microsoft and can use nothing else to create the passkey. The way this is implemented on iOS means that Authenticator comes up as an autofill option BUT IT ONLY SUPPORTS M365 and is useless for anything else. Leave it to Microsoft to take an open standard and bastardize it to the point of it being MORE CONVENIENT to just type a damn password.
The authenticator requirement was for regular MFA, with passkey you can use others like yubikey. BUT your admin can lock it to certain vendors so they could have selected Microsoft only.
I’m the admin. Every time I try to open it up, I only get guides for doing it on a regular, personal MS account.
Wait, you type passwords? KeePassXC’s auto-type awaits!
You realize password managers just open up another attack vector right?
I agree the passkey user experience needs work, but man do I enjoy it over the haphazard ‘passwordless’ website login that just sends you an email.
I get it, they’re just skipping an attack vector and basically relying only on ‘2FA’. But now I have to go to a different app/tab, copy a code, and return to the site instead of letting the password manager fill stuff in for me. Some, like kickstarter, let you still have a 2FA code enabled so you have to grab your code from whichever authenticator and go to your email. Really nice login experience out of nowhere one day. \s
The best implementation of this I’ve seen has to be Ghost, an open source self-hostable newsletter/patreon thing. They detect what email provider you have and when you enter your email, will display a link to open your inbox. It’s super neat, and I haven’t seen it anywhere else, and I’m also not sure how they do it. For something self-hostable, I’ll definitely take one less attack vector.
Doesn’t help if you’re not using a huge provider such as Gmail or Hotmail
It worked with ProtonMail
A DNS lookup on a domain says who runs the email server for email users on that domain (that’s how email senders figures out how to send you messages), and if that host is a known one then you can just pull the link to show. If you’re self hosting email then a few solutions can be recognized and login shown by guessing that the email software’s default URL pattern is used.
I figured it was something like that, thanks for the explanation!
bitwarden went from working great to buggy on browsers. sometimes the browser passes the request to the extension but most times goes to the os
What browser
i have had issues on Firefox, Chrome and Safari between Windows, Linux, and macOS
Passkeys and 1FA were always just a duct tape solution for users resuing basic passwords without having to set a stronger password requirement or relying on users to use a strong password.
I think Chrome and Firefox should have decided on making an API for their builtin password generation and filling functions, that way any password manager would be able to integrate with foolproof functionality out of box.
People already use browser auto gen passwords for the reason that its faster and usually has an account sync built in. Now it would work with any 3rd party solution as well which covers enterprise and security minded users as well.
Users won’t use a password manager if it means you have to manually make an entry everytime you make an account.
I really wish that SQRL had taken off, as it solved most of the problems noted. It was effectively passkeys that you generated on the fly based on your private key (which you can back up and restore to other platforms if necessary) and the website domain by scanning a QR code (or clicking rh QR code if your on the same device) and sends the signed challenge to the website to auth you.
No need to login to your manager on random systems, no issues with platform lock-in, no worries about dedicated hardware, no worry about losing your access if your device dies (assuming you backup your shit).
Because the security is not better. I looked into it back then and it simply didn’t have a chance.
FYI, passkeys can also do the Qr thing.
Steve put so much time into it too. SQRL really is the superior method of the two.
SQuiRreL!
Yeah, no idea why not popular.
Because it doesn’t encourage vendor lock in to big tech.
If SQRL was adopted, then the popular manifestations would have just as much vendor lockin, with built in password managers hosting the master private key without export option.
Passkey is not inherently vendor lock in. It’s mostly a consequence of password managers doing software passkeys and not making it reasonable to export private keys. It does have a mechanism a site can use to lock to “trusted vendors”, but if a site does that, that is on them for being dickish.
Passkeys cross vendor sync is in the works right now and you can already self host with Bitwarden
it does not depend on the name. like, we all use Transmission Control Protocol and HyperText Transport Protocol, and nobody cares because they don’t need to know. things can also be renamed before starting use in production, like we aren’t normally calling tech by their RFC numbers
There is still nothing better than passwords.
I don’t want my access to be tied to a specific device. Devices get lost, or break.
I don’t want someone to be able to use my face or finger or eyeball to access my data. You can legally be compelled to unlock a device with your biometric security.
So current biometric security sucks. And passkeys suck.
Also, though…passwords suck for all the reasons that we all already know.
There has to be some better method that the owner can have full agency over, I just don’t know what. I don’t have the answers.
Hardware security keys is the other option. The FIDO2 ones are compatible with most sites using passkeys.
This pretty much matches my feeling for the last 20 years or so. Passwords suck and are outdated technology. But every single alternative that has been developed over the years has sucked more, not less. They all have single-point-of-failure, vendor lock-in, assumptions about your “device”, etc.
There’s a fantastic paper from a while ago that did a great job of covering what you’re getting at. It’s one of the most cited papers in password security research. Basically, everything we’ve ever found sucks but passwords seem to suck the least. Great read if you have the time - https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-817.pdf
That is a damn nice paper, thanks for sharing that! The comparison table is, if a little wacky-looking at first glance, a pretty great overview. I skimmed it for the abstract and conclusion but now I think it’s worth reading it in full.
Every attempt at using passkeys has been a step into murkier, less easily understood, less convenient security.
Passkeys may be a “step up” from password + TFA in terms of usability, but there’s such a variety of implementations and explanations of how those implementations “keep me secure” - I feel like any idiot who grabs my phone when I’m not looking and can follow my unlock finger smudges on the screen can use my pass keys… No thanks.
This article does a great job of articulating a lot of the uncomfortableness I have around passkeys. I’ve always said they make a lot more sense in an corporate environment but the level of control you lose in a personal setting is not commensurate with the protections and possible lock-in they offer.
I just don’t like passkeys. They are an overly technical solution to what is mostly a human problem.
Idk, when I want to log into my personal GitHub a bitwarden window opens from the extension, I click the GitHub profile I wanna sign in, and I do.
It’s a great implementation since it’s not linked to a physical device and it lets me authenticate in place. It’s still MFA, it’s just more comfy.
It’s not MFA if all you need is your bitwarden password.
Unless your bitwarden has MFA and locks after an amount of time commensurate with your security needs
True, but how does GitHub know your bitwarden has MFA? It only knows something has a valid credential.
I don’t think that github has to know that. You could be using a password manager and choose to make it a minimum character boring password or meet minimum complexity requirements or use the same password on a million sites. You have to secure your credentials; complying with the minimums of a service isn’t security.
GitHub doesn’t need to know that - I think that’s why it’s a bit of a cop out for MFA. Sure, your bitwarden may implement MFA, but just a chrome browser isn’t MFA.
Passkeys enable sites to offload the responsibility of securing accounts to the user, and if the user chooses a weaker way to implement them, GitHub doesn’t give a fuck.
Github doesn’t need to know how you implement it, just that your browser is handling it (and in this case the browser lets Bitwarden handle it lol)
It technically is, it’s not about the amount of actions you need to do, it’s about the amount of actions the platform you are logging in needs to do with you. That both interactions interface with a bitwarden local device makes the weak link your local device, which already was anyway.
Github only asks me for (bitwarden’s) passkey. That’s just a single factor.
A securely stored modern certificate is going to be magnitudes more secure than password plus MFA.
The certificate path uses cryptography to prevent disclosure of your secret, and can’t be compromised when the site inevitably gets hacked.
I wouldn’t classify passkeys as MFA tho, they are a passwordless method that’s more secure than most MFA methods. Afaik it’s based on signed certificates or something like that and that’s virtually unhackable unless someone gets physical access to your device (and that’s game over anyway).
But bitwarden uploads it to the cloud to be used on any computer, AFAIK.
Bitwarden uploads the whole vault (the whole json of passwords, passkey codes, MFA identifiers, credit card info…) encrypted with your master password. Meaning that whatever is on the cloud should be virtually unbreakable. That’s why every time you write the password in the extension or Android app or whatever it takes a second or two to open, because it’s downloading and decrypting everything locally.
When you update a password they need to reencrypt the whole vault and re-upload it again even though it’s wasteful since that’s their whole security plan.
If you’re using software that properly uses your device’s SE / TPM chip then it’s much more secure against malware, etc. And the main selling point is the much stronger phishing resistance (can’t trick you into logging in via a fake site, etc)
This would be great if it worked consistently.
In reality, extensions work in some browsers but not others, on some websites but not others, and with passwords at least you can fall back to copying and pasting, or even typing, if auto-fill isn’t working in the context for whatever reason. With a passkey not only are you SOL, but it will delay your ability to move onto the password option if there is one.
The devils in the (implementation) details.
Agreed in general, but that’s how improvements roll out for anything basically.
You enable it where it works, and you keep using the nonce based MFA whose name I can’t recall right now for where it doesn’t work well.
It might sound annoying but that’s society, it takes a long time to adopt new tools and build a standard.
For users who previously reused passwords across all their sites, passkeys are a huge step-up.
That is exactly why passkeys are a good thing. Basically everyone reused passwords everywhere.
A password manager is better than passkeys in 2026
It’s a false dichotomy to have one or the other. I use passkeys as a quicker and more convenient way to log in to some sites, but I still have passwords in my password manager as a fallback.
Some websites prevent you from using a password if you set up a passkey.
Pass keys are horrible.
It seems like what’s actually horrible would be those websites’ implementation. But yeah, I’m definitely sticking with a manager.
Really depends on what you mean by passkey, since it’s actually a fairly vague term for a bundle of technologies.
I don’t really care for password manager passkeys; just use a password, all it really does is save you from needing to enter a username in a login flow.
But I’m a big fan of hardware 2fa using non-resident keys (“passkey” lite); I’ll use a regular login flow with a password manager, then the 2FA step with a hardware token. Basically bulletproof (ditto if you secure your PW manager with hw 2fa) and painless.
Even pw synced passkeys at least have the benefits of both being phishing resisting + replay protected, as well as being able to use the TPM chip for extra local protection.
Hardware keys are logically simpler though
Some password managers can sync passkeys for you! Bitwarden can handle it
android doesn’t allow 3rd party apps to use passkeys nor autofill 2fa consistently. For passkeys, you are forced to use google services for it, or loose access, making it pointless. TOTP codes meanwhile can at least be copied and pasted manually from a password manager.
https://developer.android.com/identity/passkeys/manage-passkeys
Actually not, 3rd party Android apps can act as passkeys providers
With Bitwarden you can even do your own self hosted sync of passkeys
https://bitwarden.com/blog/bitwarden-passkeys-mobile/
Any app where it doesn’t work has chosen to not use the right API
It’s android version dependent. Only 14 and up support 3rd party providers.
Passkeys are supported on devices that run Android 9 (API level 28) or higher.
On many devices, Credential Manager stores passkeys to Google Password Manager by default. Users can choose other password managers as its passkey providers in the System Settings on Android 14 or higher.
Given the slowness of android version rollouts, this will be an issue for a long time.
I also think supporting older androids is pushing apps to do it the “wrong” way and making it google specific.
14 and up seems to be about 80% of users, and I suspect there’s a correlation between people who want to use passkeys with a third party password manager and being within two major versions of current.
Maybe 5 or 10 years ago, but who doesn’t use a password manager these days? They generate random passwords and remember them for you
I just remember my passwords idk lol. I never understood the logic of a password manager, someone hacks your manager they have everything in your life? Rather just run the risk of getting hacked one account at a time rather than they all get hacked at once when they get my password manager.
So make the manager’s password massive. There, that complete sentence just now is over 30 characters long and could literally be a password. You can double up security with a secret file that you must locate on your PC, in KeePass, at least. You can also add notes about entries, track more than just website accounts, etc. It’s just too much brainpower to remember individual websites’ passwords. All important ones have 2FA anyway.
Managers are local to your computer so you likely messed up big-time if it got hacked, whereas websites can get hacked entirely out of our control.
Do you know any non tech people, especially over 40? Literally none of them uses a password manager.
Most of the non-techy people I know use the password manager built into their Web browser at the very least.
“use” I bet it just saves everything automatically, and they don’t even know their passwords are there. just “oh look, my password has appeared, lets click it!”
Huh I thought it was going to be the correcthorsebatterystaple comic
In my experience you’re more likely to find a sticky note on the desk with passwords than someone using a password manager, 2fa, or an ounce of ‘common’ sense.
My current employer will not authorize the use of a password manager. I have a key fob for my Microsoft account, and another account does phone verification. I use one password. If they don’t want to put the effort in for account security then neither do I. I use a password manager for nearly all my other accounts.
So we should be using passkeys to access our password managers that generate random passwords and remember them for us! Ultimate protection.
Sadly did not dig into the whole “the other side decides which device you are allowed to use” topic, a feature inherently build into passkeys.
I think that is only an issue based on what Passkey attestation is configured by the relying party? From what I have read a lot of public facing companies implementing it will have passkey attestation statements configured as None, which typically means there isn’t an authenticator certificate verification.
Only companies issuing their own passkeys on company hardware has a reason to enable attestation (forcing use of company approved devices throughout). Any public facing service has no reason to use attestation.
I think their biggest weakness is the vendor lock in. Using a 3rd party password manager is the best solution for most people, so they arent locked to their phone. But they are right in saying none of it is quite ready.
I think the article is forgetting, they are password replacements, not account recovery replacements. Realistically, people are just as likely to forget a password, and account recovery proceedures still have to be in place. I dont see the issue there.
Passkeys are good they are just being pushed before properly fully developed, but we are slowly getting there.
The main problem is if that you lose the device that’s physically attached to the passkey… You’ll lose your account.
I’d just prefer a biometrics-first approach.
Unless hackers started cutting people’s fingers, which is something just too risky for a rational hacker to do so it’s more than improbable, biometrics are way more secure, consistent, battle-tested and most important, more convenient and, by design, unforgettable.
Naww… biometrics are easy to steal or coerce from people.
Lmao, easy to steal.
What’s going the hacker to do? Cut off your fingers or extract your eyeballs? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
That was a long time ago and things are better now but it’s just an example.
How the fuck have you never heard of fingerprint copying?
Every fingerprint scanner which attempts to apply liveness detection has been fooled.
No biometrics is secure when used remotely. Ever. You can literally just replay the biometric data people send you after you create a phishing site and hack their accounts if it was sent raw.
That’s why you shouldn’t use exclusive on device storage for them, like Apple/Google want you to. Biometrics are shit, I prefer passwords if we are having no passkeys. I agree they are not perfect, but we can improve them and they will be a lot better than passwords for the majority of people.
Also, you wont lose your account, youll just have to go through a recovery process. Exactly the same as you would now if you forgot a password or lost a MFA code.
Biometrics are NOT shit.
And the recovery process is useless if you don’g have acess to your recovery method. Passkeys create the Ouroboros kind of situation.
Don’t proper biometrics also lock you to a device? My phone isn’t sending my fingerprint anywhere, it’s comparing data against its baseline and then attesting that. If you did it any other way, then any data leak means you’re exposed literally forever.
Passkeys are just more convenient replacements to passwords, ideally suited for a password manager flow.
For most people, this works really well and is a lot better than remembering loads of passwords. It’s easier to get people to remember a single stronger password and use passkeys to login to services.
The whole lose access thing isnt as big of a deal breaker as you make it sound (It literally works the same as it does now with passwords). Considering the large amount of people that forget their passwords and constantly reset them, passkeys can help. There’s a reason popular sites just ask you for a code from an email now instead of even prompting for your password.
You want to use biometrics to individually login to services, great. But what about those of us who don’t want to rely on biometrics? That’s where passkeys do both jobs.
Biometrics is inherently not securable and the only viable method of using it ever is locally only to unlock a different secret, which actually can be secure.
Most biometrics is trivial to duplicate, fingerprints can replicated from photographs.
Biometrics are battle tested and got annihilated in every conflict. It’s a total loser.
