this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
271 points (86.3% liked)
Technology
59495 readers
3081 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm not gonna lie I still don't understand how passkeys work, or how they're different from 2fa. I'm just entering a PIN and it's ok somehow? I don't get it.
If you've ever used ssh it's very similar to how ssh keys work. You create a cryptographic key for the site; this is the passkey itself. When you go to "log in" the client and server exchange cryptographic challenges, which also verifies the site's identity (so you can't be phished...another site can't pretend to be your bank, and there are no credentials to steal anyway). Keys are stored locally and are generally access restricted by various methods like PIN, passphrase, security key, OTP, etc. When you're entering your PIN it's how the OS has chosen to secure the key storage. But you've also already passed one of the security hurdles just by having access to that phone/computer. It is "something you have".
So one password to access them all basically?
That's quite a weakness.
If you get my master keepass password, you have all my passwords, too.
As I said to Spotlight7573 yes true, I just hoped for something better.
If you're paranoid about this, go buy a yubikey and use that to secure your device/access to your passkeys. Being able to secure your own data instead of relying on the admin who may or may not know what they're doing to secure the server is an advantage of passkeys.