Looks like a huge amount of security vendors are working to have a secure and open standard for passkey portability between platforms.
It is always good to see major collaboration in the security space like this considering the harsh opinions that users of some of these vendors have toward many of the others. I just wish apps and sites would stop making me login with username and password if passkeys are meant to replace that lol.
Seems like people in the comments are misunderstaning the announcement entirely. This protocol is about import and export from password managers and not about having them synced between devices. It would prevent a lock in effect. This is a great development!
FIDO Alliance’s draft specifications – Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP) and Credential Exchange Format (CXF) – define a standard format for transferring credentials in a credential manager including passwords, passkeys and more to another provider in a manner that ensures transfer are not made in the clear and are secure by default.
I personally like it. Imo passkeys should optimally be device bound and the private keys should be stored in TPM or equivalent and be non-exportable.
Well, nothing is stopping you to keep passkeys only in one place, why force others to do what you like? Now we have options and less friction to switch to a competitor. Which results in more competition and that results in better products. Well theoretically…
When most sites refer to passkeys, they’re typically talking about the software-backed kind that are stored in password managers or browsers. There are still device-bound passkeys though. Also since they’re just FIDO/WebAuthn credentials under the hood, you can still use hardware-backed systems to store them if you really want.
While you’re right that device bound and non-exportable would be best from a security standpoint, there needs to be sufficient adoption of the tech by sites for it to be usable at all and sufficient adoption requires users to have options that have less friction/cost associated with them, like browser and password-manager based ones.
Looking at it through the lens of replacing passwords instead of building the absolutely highest-security system helps explain why they’re not limited to device-bound anymore.
I don’t like that passkeys are portable, this kind of defeats the entire purpose. The way they were sold to me is the following: it’s 2 factors in one. The first is the actual device where the key lives, and the second, the user verification, like a pin, face scan, fingerprint etc. If it’s synced across the cloud, there’s no longer the first factor being the unique key on the unique device.
Granted, passkeys even without the first factor are still magnitudes better in terms of convenience and security compared to passwords, but it just disappoints me a little that there are no good options to save passkeys on my local device only, with no cloud sync.
If anyone knows of a local-only passkey manager app for android, as well as the same as a firefox extension, I’d love to know about it!
If you don’t want to sync your credentials with a server, why are you using a server based credential manager?
For 2 reasons:
- I want to sync my credentials that cannot be made unique and revocable (ie passwords). I can have a single passkey per device, I cannot have a password per device for a same account. I also have to memorize a password, and I have hundreds that I may need to access while I am away and only have my phone.
- I use one because currently I have not found a convenient way to save local passkeys on Android and my Linux PC.
I guess you’re better off buying a physical security key, which offers some guarantee that the keys cannot be exflitrated from the device.
I have one, but I use it as a second factor because it does not have a way of identifying me
Strange, my Yubikey allows me to authenticate using Passkeys just fine by entering the PIN that protects my stored credentials.
If they’re not portable how would I for example login to an account while on my Desktop, if I set up the passkey on my Phone?
Assuming that all services you log into support multiple passkeys. My auto financing company doesn’t, for example
There are already systems in place that allow temporary passkey sharing, for example with a QR code (CaBLE) https://www.corbado.com/blog/webauthn-passkey-qr-code
Doesn’t that imply you still have to open up your phone to temporarily share to your pc whenever you need it?
Them being portable makes them actually useful though for me, unless there was a way to use them from a phone to login to a website on a desktop/other device.
Being able to login into a password manager and use a passkey is great, passkeys need to become mainstream to get everyone away from passwords, but they can’t be locked locally onto one platform or you have issues. The regular joe won’t be backing them up from their iPhones or whatever.
I don’t see why a local option wouldn’t exist though, perhaps they will come once passkeys have matured further.
I read the post more closely and saw that this isn’t about syncing the keys across password managers, it’s about transfering them to a different password manager/device. In that case I’m okay with the initiative. This is to prevent lock-in and I’m all for it.
They should be portable. I don’t know if they should be stored in the cloud though. Ideally you can open a password database in whatever application you want if you have the database and login information. Not allowing this is inconvenient and doesn’t seriously increase security.
Having them not be portable ensures people use them less frequently. If I couldn’t sync mine between my phone and desktop I probably wouldn’t use it. The way I do it isn’t built into my manager (KeepassDX), but I use Syncthing to keep it up to date on both devices. It’d be better if there was an official option for people bad with technology.
Admittedly, for some password managers, the passkeys are stored locally and are not accessible in the cloud unencrypted without the decryption keys that exist on devices you authorize.
This may still not make a difference for you though. For me, I consider passkeys, even stored in the cloud, to be enough for the vast majority, so I appreciate these vendors working to make passkeys more easy for the end user.
I agree and I still store my passkeys in proton pass, but that’s more because there’s no real option for storing them locally only. I really like passkeys and they make me optimistic about the future, it’s just that I think the way they should work is that each device should have a passkey registered to an account, so that the access can then be revoked if the device was compromised. And it’s even convenient in this way with the QR codes that you can use to temporarily share a passkey to then be able to add the new device.
Why is the buzz around passkeys is back? I am seeing them way more often than they used to be. I think I have created passkeys for 2 apps and don’t even know how that worked, it such a breeze that almost felt it wasn’t secure lol.
In what ways the passkeys are different than authenticator apps?
Convenience and security.
Authenticator apps are still vulnerable to phishing, passkeys are not.
With the ability to transfer passkeys, the attack vector phishing does not sound that far fetched. Tho i have not looked into the transfer process.
We will see i guess.
Idk, a SSH-Key is also transferrable, yet it’s still safe
And given that Passkeys are essentially specialized ssh-keys, I don’t see the Problem.
But I’d like to know it I’m wrong.
I have my passkeys in my keepass file in my private cloud since about 6month using strongbox on iOS and KeepassXC on Linux. Sadly, not many websites support passkeys on firefox for linux desktop yet… Hope this helps!
Keepass is a style of encrypted file with a list of the passwords and the syntax is standardised. There are many apps/programs for any platform that offer pw management based on that file. I use keepassXC app on linux and strongbox on iOS since both of them are well integrated into the operating systems. On ios i use the webDav protocol to sync the keepass file on my server with strongbox app. On Linux I use nextcloud sync to mount my files on the server into linux and in keepassXC I have set it to automatically grab that keepass file on boot. Ah of course the keypass file is protected by a strong password, but this could as well be a hardware token like a yubikey. But if you have a yubikey, you just store your passkeys on that😂
yay glorified, overcomplicated passwords!
i get hate for it but just use a password manager if you can’t juggle them?
I think it is quite the opposite for the end user. If apps/websites, begin to replace traditional password login with passkeys, this will be a measurable improvement for average consumers.
not really an improvement if you need extra software for it.
and cant just easily login.
In one sentence, you say, “just use a password manager”, on the next, “not really an improvement if you need extra software”. I’m not sure what argument you’re having, but neither one really addresses what this article is about.
This keeps the passkeys in the password manager (I use dashlane, it rocks, and synchronises the passkeys just like the passwords), but this new protocol allows you to change and export the passkeys to other password managers, preventing vendor lock in and allowing for transfer to another password manager.
Hope this clarifies things! And everyone should use a password manager of some kind; we should expect whatever site we’re using to be hacked, and the only way to be safe is to have a unique password per site.
I dont exactly like passkeys, but yes, from a technical standpoint, they do indeed solve Phishing
