GitHub announced today the introduction of passwordless authentication support in public beta, allowing users who opt-in to upgrade from security keys to passkeys.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting something here, but wouldn’t that mean, I can’t just access my account if I lose my auth device? Am I supposed to always have a passkey device locked somewhere safe?
I just tried this out with Github. My passkey lives in 1Password so it’s backed up and synced across devices. It also lets me sign in with normal MFA/TOTP if I don’t have the passkey, or use a recovery code. Incidentally @brian@programming.dev this is working in Firefox now.
Passkeys use a challenge/response protocol that doesn’t transmit any actual secrets. This makes them phishing resistant as you can’t just “type in your passkey secret” it gitnub .com
Maybe I’m misinterpreting something here, but wouldn’t that mean, I can’t just access my account if I lose my auth device? Am I supposed to always have a passkey device locked somewhere safe?
I just tried this out with Github. My passkey lives in 1Password so it’s backed up and synced across devices. It also lets me sign in with normal MFA/TOTP if I don’t have the passkey, or use a recovery code. Incidentally @brian@programming.dev this is working in Firefox now.
So, it’s just a password with a different name.
Seriously, what is the functional difference between this and stricter password requirements? I don’t see it.
Passkeys use a challenge/response protocol that doesn’t transmit any actual secrets. This makes them phishing resistant as you can’t just “type in your passkey secret” it gitnub .com