this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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Google will now make passkeys the default for personal accounts (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology
187 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Passkey is some sort of specific unique key to a device allowing to use a pin on a device instead of the password. But which won't work on another device.

Now I don't know if that key can be stolen or not, or if it's really more secure or not, as people have really unsecure pins.

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[–] alvvayson 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, you're just wrong. It does get rid of passwords as the authentication mechanism and replaces it with a private key.

Claiming otherwise is being ignorant on how it works.

Even if someone knows the password to your phone or yubikey, they still need your phone or yubikey. Knowing just the password is useless. If you are a security professional, you would know this is called a possession factor.

If you've been having this conversation for years, you really ought to know better.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t think you understand what an attack surface is.

[–] alvvayson 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lol. I guess you learned a word from the CEH you flunked.

Edit: but yes, passkeys greatly reduce the attack surface compared to a password.

And when using a properly hardened device like a yubikey, you can actually minimize your attack surface to as low as it's ever going to be in a web context.