zlacker

[return to "A Tour of WebAuthn"]
1. lapcat+Vr[view] [source] 2024-12-26 23:00:42
>>caust1+(OP)
> A passkey is a synced, discoverable WebAuthn credential.

This is my fundamental problem with passkeys: I don't want to use any syncing service.

To be clear, I don't want to deprive other people of the ability to sync their credentials; I simply want to opt out myself. I just want to be able to manually back up and restore my credentials, like I've always done with passwords, but the passkey vendors seem to want to refuse to give anyone this ability. The vendors claim that this is to make phishing impossible, but I abhor paternalism in all forms, and also it's suspicious that this paternalism forces people to use the syncing systems of the passkey vendors, which are usually paid subscriptions. So passkeys become an endless supply of money for the vendors.

It's very telling that passkeys were designed and shipped without any export/import mechanism. You can plainly see the priority of the passkey vendors, which is to lock you in. Allegedly, export/import is coming sometime in the future, but I strongly suspect that they'll end up with some kind of "approved provider" system so that the big passkey vendors can retain absolute control and avoid giving power to the users.

◧◩
2. amloza+sv[view] [source] 2024-12-26 23:42:13
>>lapcat+Vr
This is the exact reason I self host vault warden. I get all the convenience of syncing passkeys, but know that I am the only one with access to the back-end.

I am also slightly paranoid as a security engineer, and admit that whole heartedly.

◧◩◪
3. g_p+9w[view] [source] 2024-12-26 23:50:27
>>amloza+sv
I share your paranoia and felt that passkeys were a step back as anything getting access to your browser extension memory can realistically dump both your "password" and MFA ("passkey") in one move.

I wonder if there would be a way for vaultwarden to wrap passkeys such that a hardware FIDO2 key is needed to decrypt them "per-use", and prevent software on the host from stealing a pile of passkeys that give direct access to accounts without further MFA.

Right now it feels like passkeys in the password manager is akin to storing MFA seeds and recovery keys in the same password manager...

[go to top]