YHK - yet another hacker news clone

They’re bad and I wish places would stop being so aggressive about them (I’m looking at you Amazon and PayPal)

They exist for sole purpose companies can just shoot the "we have been hacked, but worry not your 'passwords' have not been leaked" email.

It's entirely one sided solution.

Passkeys have a marketing problem where no one is able to describe simply what it is without having to use technical jargon. There's also the problem where each OS tries too hard in pushing this to the face of end-user

Is there a reason why passkeys couldn't be used in "expire-periodically" mode?

They really are bad. Passkeys have turned out to be just another password that you cannot even memorize.

While the technology itself may be great (I don't really know since I don't use them) it has been co-opted by the tech conglomerates as another form of isolating and walling off users into their ecosystems.

And honestly, nowadays, if tech companies are pushing really hard for something then that is an immediate red flag for me and it bears more scrutiny. One of those "if you see them running that way you run the opposite way".

Yes, thank you. Maybe I am getting old but password+yubikey/webauthn was really top UX.

Do passkeys improve security posture for the average person, reducing the likelihood of them losing their accounts to fraudulent actors? Absolutely.

But they also introduce single points of failure, as the article points out. I can't even remember how many times I've had to help a family member recover their account or get confused when they can't sign in on a new device. It's incredibly frustrating that this flow is promoted as the default for so many services.

1password is the best solution I've found for the average person. It's not perfect (it's definitely more complex than writing down your passwords on a piece of paper or using the same password everywhere) but it's much easier than juggling yubikeys. I know so many non-technical staff members who prefer the OS or browser keys even if it means another account recovery is lurking around the corner.

Passkeys remind me of ipv6 in that they are a "solution" coming from the supply-side, without (apparently) having done any research in what motivates actual users (and what would motivate them to switch).

<<ducks>>

I agree with all the points this articulates. I understand why for many users they are great. But I would prefer better acceptance and continuance of the simpler, unfishable, u2f simple hardware keys.

The experience is also junk if you're using a password manager, I have passkeys that I'm not sure if I saved to the OS manager or my password manager... mostly my fault but I enter passwords so many times a day it can be hard to stay on top of which UI I'm clicking yes in to store them.

Password managers are great IMO, I can use some absurdly long password, backup is reliable, I can use them across devices. For extra secure stuff 2FA works the same, I've got an app with codes I can easily back up and use from multiple devices.

Passkeys tend to obscure everything and take away a lot of control.

Completely agree. I think the root of many of its issues is the inability to add a key that you don't currently hold. This prevents me from storing a backup key in a safe, for example.

I proposed an alternative scheme many years ago: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343318317_Privacy-a... . By allowing "offline" keys you can also treat them as higher priority, and use them to revoke any lesser keys from attackers if your account is compromised.

It would also be nicer to get rid of usernames, but that's a fight against the data-gathering powers that we're unlikely to win.

YES. This exactly. I work across multiple devices, some of which are nonstandard/uncommon (Linux, Xiaomi China ROM, ...) and I've NEVER had passkeys work properly - yet everything constantly prompts me to add one. Even if they did work, I'd have to carry around hardware keys or register each computer separately. And the lack of backups if a device is lost/broken is definitely a larger concern for me than being phished of my TOTP keys.

As someone who uses a single password manager on my computer and phone, I don't see the problem with passkeys. I use Safari on both and I never even had to "set up" anything.

I can see why they would be problematic for people who otherwise live life with a single love2025 password though.

I like using passkeys in bitwarden from Firefox, I just wish it didn't popup a dialog that's usually behind the browser.

Passkeys do marginally improve security against MITM and phishing attacks, but they are primarily for protecting the lowest common denominator from themselves: people who re-use passwords and/or don't use a password manager.

If you use multiple devices throughout the day, registering passkeys in all of these systems becomes a big headache with O(m*n) complexity, so putting the passkeys in a password manager is the only realistic solution. But this still breaks the login flow for a very common use case: how do I log in on a device that I don't own? With a password in a password manager I at least have the option of manually typing the password.

The biggest problem, though, is how users are pushed into it without any warning or knowledge of what they're signing up for. I've accidentally set up passkeys just by clicking an okay button a few times in the past and had to go back and figure out how to undo it after being blocked from login on another computer (which computer was I on again?).

I agree 100% i learned that my old school with whom I had linked to my windows computer and finished my degree with one day required passkeys rather than passwords on all devices. This force locked my windows PC back to passkey mode luckily I remember recovery account and got a passkey to work. But it took months to figure out why I had to use it. All the help board were said just click this button which was grayed out. Or set this register key which auto repopulated. It was an awful experience. I like my password as default

Passkeys have made my life very easy. Especially using Proton Vault.

If you think passkeys aren't ready yet, blame the people implementing it on their platforms.

I'm was tempted to come in here and say "you're holding it wrong." But then I quickly realized that I had to spend weeks changing my behaviors and messing around with devices in order to get it to work correctly.

As someone who's OpSec puts swiss cheese to shame Passkey has been a godsend. My passwords are actually much better because of it.

If you have to use passkeys, try KeePassXC and KeePassXC-Browser. I used them to set one up for Amazon a few days ago, as Amazon now forces passkeys as of this month, at least for my account. It was relatively painless.

That said, I don't like passkeys either.

Ecosystem is not mature yet for individuals?

Probably hundreds of millions or even billion people have devices that support biometric auth. How is that not mature?

The point about poor support for 3rd party managers is so frustrating. Because this is correct, that is the obvious solution for the normal user, but passkey implementations somehow do not know how to deal with it.

Amazon prompts me to create a passkey everytime I log in, even when I logged in with a passkey, because my passkeys live in Bitwarden rather than my OS or browser.

And the confusing mechanism hurts there too: I'm always a little bit afraid that i'm somehow more in danger because I keep them in a vault that's shared on all my devices rather than a TPM, because whenever the protocol is explained the "it can't leave your device" part is highlighted as the main source of the security, except.... mine obviously do leave my device, with the vault, so.....

I've resisted passkeys for some of the reasons listed. I use third-party password managers, they're device/system independent, and I can export the data when I want to. I don't see passkeys as a big advantage, or perhaps I should say the bigger advantage isn't really for the _user_.

Of course, at the rate we see security failures everywhere, I'm not entirely convinced writing your passwords on post-it notes wasn't such a bad idea after all.

I am conflicted with passkeys.

I actually prefer non-resident U2F in some ways. You don't have to store anything on your key, you are just signing requests. This is relevant where U2F/FIDO keys have limited slots for 'resident' keys.

In principle, it's great. You have one good password to remember for the average user, and that's enforced by their device's probably good enough security posture.

They are resistant to being phished and they won't reuse the same one everywhere. They then don't end up going from hunter2 to hunter2! everywhere.

But my experience for users is that they worry they are giving their biometrics to Amazon or whoever and so the UX just confuses them.

The certification aspect was new to me too last time passkeys came up. Sites can require that a given passkey has been certified.

The patchy support for them is also frustrating. MacOS does not support NFC FIDO/U2F. iOS does.

using them with 1password has been pretty effortless. 'want to add the passkey' sure why not. 'want to use the passkey?' sure why not. for me it works across devices/os/platform so not sure what the big gripe is tbh.

Account lockout as the author mentions is the biggest risk on personal accounts.

Passkeys just make it harder/riskier.

Two crucial things you can do with a password that you can't do with a passkey:

1. Write it down on a piece of paper and put it in a safe deposit box.

2. Read it on one device (or from a piece of paper!) and enter it manually on another device.

Plain text is the ultimate form of cross-platform portability. Passkeys are the ultimate form of vendor lockdown. The passkey vendors won't even allow you to view the private key, unlike with ssh keys, which you can also write down on a piece of paper. It's vendor cabal to destroy computing freedom in the name of "security", always the excuse. Tech company paternalism at its worst.

This is generally the same experience I've had.

Microsoft is especially poorly prepared for this - Often if you have a passkey, it will CONTINUE To ask you to create a passkey (a new and different one), and it may save it in a different place, which is infuriating.

Strong password + MFA is the way, and I don't see that changing.

I absolutely hate them and avoid them everywhere I can. I'm not bound to a single device or I don't want to get bound to some, and some pages quit your option with a normal password login after setting up a passkey. Absolutely frustrating.

I have said before, I'm personally not interested using "Something I have"/"device bound" as an authentication factor. I'm also not interested in the sync "workarounds" that store keys in the cloud.

People have replied it's possible to extract the private key, but it's not clear to me that that's usable (maybe it is I don't know). It's certainly not in line with what passkey devs want people to do and not do, so I'm not interested in "fighting" against the "flow" so to speak.

I'm happy with TOTP, as I can manage and use the codes where I want, under my control.