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
Question is by what? I could see an argument that it is an overcomplication of some ill-defined application of x509 certificates or ssh user keys, but roughly they all are comparable fundamental technologies.
The biggest gripe to me is that they are too fussy about when they are allowed and how they are stored rather than leaving it up to the user. You want to use a passkey to a site that you manually trusted? Tough, not allowed. You want to use against an IP address, even if that IP address has a valid certificate? Tough, not allowed.
They were surpassed by password managers and 2fa.
Technically they are the 2fa. The second factor is something you have. I store all my passkeys in my password manager too, so I’m not faulting you, but technically that’s just undoing the second factor, because now my two factors are “two things that are both unlocked by the same one thing I know”. Which is one complicated factor spread across two form fields.
Password managers are a workaround, and broadly speaking the general system is still weak because password managers have relatively low adoption and plenty of people are walking around with poorly managed credentials. Also doesn’t do anything to mitigate a phishing attack, should the user get fooled they will leak a password they care about.
2FA is broad, but I’m wagering you specifically mean TOTP, numbers that change based on a shared secret. Problems there are: -Transcribing the code is a pain -Password managers mitigate that, but the most commonly ‘default’ password managers (e.g. built into the browser) do nothing for them -Still susceptible to phishing, albeit on a shorter time scale
Pub/priv key based tech is the right approach, but passkey does wrap it up with some obnoxious stuff.
All of the modern browsers have built in password managers so I doubt that very much.
Are they as secure as your self-hosted bit warden that is not accessible via the Internet? No.
But it does still keep track of your usernames and even alerts you if you have a breach.
Ok, I’ll concede that Chrome makes Google a relatively more popular password manager than I considered, and it tries to steer users toward generated passwords that are credible. Further by being browser integrated, it mitigates some phishing by declining to autofill with the DNS or TLS situation is inconsistent. However I definitely see people discard the suggestions and choose a word and think ‘leet-speak’ makes it hard (“I could never remember that, I need to pick something I remember”). Using it for passwords still means the weak point is human behavior (in selecting the password, in opting not to reuse the password, and in terms of divulging it to phishing attempt).
If you ascribe to Google password manager being a good solution, it also handles passkeys. That removes the ‘human can divulge the fundamental secret that can be reused’ while taking full advantage of the password manager convenience.