Passkeys replace passwords with encrypted key pairs that can’t be phished or leaked. Learn how FIDO2 and WebAuthn work, their pros and flaws.

Passkeys are built on the FIDO2 standard (CTAP2 + WebAuthn standards). They remove the shared secret, stop phishing at the source, and make credential-stuffing useless.

But adoption is still low, and interoperability between Apple, Google, and Microsoft isn’t seamless.

I broke down how passkeys work, their strengths, and what’s still missing

  • Pamasich@kbin.earth
    3·
    11 days ago

    This only applies though if it’s a per-device passkey that uses a private key stored securely that cannot be exported.

    If the private key can be exported, it can be stolen and the factors becomes invalid.

    But people also store their private key in cloud solutions (some here mentioned doing that) which just makes the factor invalid anyway, since then it’s not device-bound anymore, and it’s the device that verifies your identity with those methods.

    Like, what if someone hacks the cloud service storing the passkeys and steals them? Not really any different from storing passwords in a cloud, and that one isn’t called 2FA either.