Admittedly I didn’t read that one guy’s blog post very closely, but it seemed to claim that because some companies may some day misuse/abuse some features of passkeys, passkeys are poison and no one should ever use them.
It’s a very basic principle, that you don’t create powers that could be abused. That they haven’t been abused yet does not make doing so ok. It like saying it’s ok that my government was given the power to lock people up with no reason or due process because they haven’t used it yet.
The features they’re talking about are secure from a cryptographic standpoint.
However, there are features built into the passkey system so that a company could decide that it will only accept passkeys from a specific piece of hardware or software.
This isn’t necessarily bad, you may only want your server to allow you access if the passkey comes from your phone’s hardware. A person could have stolen your passkey but they’re unable to fake the attestation step.
On the other end of things, a company like Google could provide a passkey service which requires you to use hardware provided by vendors that they approve of and they could abuse their position to force it’s implementation, such as how you can use Google to sign into websites via OIDC.
Google could just as easily provide a service for ‘secure’ passkeys which are only allowed to be issued by phones provided by Google, Verizon or AT&T. No more third-party OSs (at least, if you want to sign into anything on the Internet) and no more jailbroken phones. You would have to use the exact, spyware laden, operating system that comes installed directly from your cellular provider who would have remote root access to your device.
I think the idea that we can just boycott passkeys and prevent this is nonsense magical thinking. It requires some hypothetical world where we can perfectly coordinate a boycott of otherwise useful technology. In reality this issue will remain obscure and generally only known to people interested in the topic while Google can pour tens of millions in advertising to reach everybody on the planet explaining how good and secure attested passkeys are to mainstream Internet users.
Use passkeys, they’re useful and more secure than passwords. Not using them won’t prevent enshittification, just sit back and watch the slow motion attested passkey trainwreck as it unfolds over the next decade.
Another point someone brought up in one of these posts: the remote attestation (IE locking your passkeyto a specific app or software) issue is highly unlikely to be used for public websites, because it would block / halt the adoption they’re trying to promote, and its against their interest. No website that I know of has done this for TOTP either.
They push TOTP and passkeys now because they want to avoid the costs and support around resolving hijacked accounts, and password phishers.
The use-case for remote attestation is a valid one also: say you have a really secure internal system that you want to lock down to only users of your specific passkey validator, and make sure its that specific app, unspoofed.
The developer who added a “date of birth” field to systemd received death threats, because some people saw it as a first step towards age verification and apparently the appropriate response to that is cyber bullying and death threats
Admittedly I didn’t read that one guy’s blog post very closely, but it seemed to claim that because some companies may some day misuse/abuse some features of passkeys, passkeys are poison and no one should ever use them.
It’s a very basic principle, that you don’t create powers that could be abused. That they haven’t been abused yet does not make doing so ok. It like saying it’s ok that my government was given the power to lock people up with no reason or due process because they haven’t used it yet.
Well if that’s possible, it doesn’t sound like a good basis for security.
The features they’re talking about are secure from a cryptographic standpoint.
However, there are features built into the passkey system so that a company could decide that it will only accept passkeys from a specific piece of hardware or software.
This isn’t necessarily bad, you may only want your server to allow you access if the passkey comes from your phone’s hardware. A person could have stolen your passkey but they’re unable to fake the attestation step.
On the other end of things, a company like Google could provide a passkey service which requires you to use hardware provided by vendors that they approve of and they could abuse their position to force it’s implementation, such as how you can use Google to sign into websites via OIDC.
Google could just as easily provide a service for ‘secure’ passkeys which are only allowed to be issued by phones provided by Google, Verizon or AT&T. No more third-party OSs (at least, if you want to sign into anything on the Internet) and no more jailbroken phones. You would have to use the exact, spyware laden, operating system that comes installed directly from your cellular provider who would have remote root access to your device.
I think the idea that we can just boycott passkeys and prevent this is nonsense magical thinking. It requires some hypothetical world where we can perfectly coordinate a boycott of otherwise useful technology. In reality this issue will remain obscure and generally only known to people interested in the topic while Google can pour tens of millions in advertising to reach everybody on the planet explaining how good and secure attested passkeys are to mainstream Internet users.
Use passkeys, they’re useful and more secure than passwords. Not using them won’t prevent enshittification, just sit back and watch the slow motion attested passkey trainwreck as it unfolds over the next decade.
I’m gonna need to find this comment in ten years. Wish me luck
Please provide a blood sample to verify your Age. Thank you for using Open FaceGoogazonthropic, we love you.
Another point someone brought up in one of these posts: the remote attestation (IE locking your passkeyto a specific app or software) issue is highly unlikely to be used for public websites, because it would block / halt the adoption they’re trying to promote, and its against their interest. No website that I know of has done this for TOTP either.
They push TOTP and passkeys now because they want to avoid the costs and support around resolving hijacked accounts, and password phishers.
The use-case for remote attestation is a valid one also: say you have a really secure internal system that you want to lock down to only users of your specific passkey validator, and make sure its that specific app, unspoofed.
Brought to you by the community sending death threats to a guy that added a date field in a program
Who did what now?
The developer who added a “date of birth” field to systemd received death threats, because some people saw it as a first step towards age verification and apparently the appropriate response to that is cyber bullying and death threats