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.
Nope. Not going to have my entire digital everything depend on me not losing or breaking a single electronic device.
From Ricky Mondello, who works on passkeys at Apple: “If it’s device-bound, it’s not a passkey”:
https://hachyderm.io/@rmondello/111188643228872151
That’s a terrible take … He’s confusing “what it does and how it works” with “how you manage it”.
It’s like saying “don’t call it a password if you write it down”. It’s confusing and unhelpful.
No it’s literally in the spec. Passkeys are designed for cross device synchronization. You have to go out of your way to make it local only (or use a different webauthn spec like physical security keys)
They’re just private keys. By nature you can copy them wherever you want. I guess I don’t know why he’s making that distinction at all.
The original spec is resident keys including TPM protected or hardware token protected keys designed to be impossible to copy. That’s why there’s a distinction.
You won’t need to?
The key is for a single device. Logging in on another one is going to generate another key.
They key is secured with the pin of the device, so when you try to log in, you can use the pin to log in, and not the password.
https://youtu.be/6lBixL_qpro?si=wFFQwrfjQBKDHs5B
Would you have to set up multiple devices when making your account then, if you wanted more than just your phone?
Yes. Unless there was a way to share that key between devices. I know Bitwarden is working on a vault for keys but it’s not released yet. It was due out now so I assume it’s delayed.
Apple is quite dogmatic in that their implementation demands cross device syncing.
It’s definitely possible to have such an implementation and those will be the most common. You take a very small security risk for a huge convenience factor.
For the more paranoid, device-bound passkeys do not sync. If you lose the device, you will need to go through a recovery procedure.
Thanks for posting this video. Very good explanation for those unfamiliar with the technology.