A new login technique is becoming available in 2023: the passkey. The passkey promises to solve phishing and prevent password reuse. But lots of smart and security-oriented folks are confused about what exactly a passkey is. There’s a good reason for that. A passkey is in some sense one of two (or three) different things, depending on how it’s stored.
That’s probably true, but perfect can’t be the enemy of good. Getting everyone who currently uses the worst method (a single global password) to use a better method means that better method has to be easier than that, and as things lie right now, most security researchers agree that the method most likely to succeed is removing roadblocks, both client-side and server-side, to make password mangers even easier and more secure (whether you want to store it locally or not is really up to you, and again, it is already an option). We’re not talking about people who already try to stay secure, or care about the exact details. You and I already know we care about security and do our best, presumably. The crucial thing is to onramp Bob Q. Public, the middle manager whose password on everything is
rover73because he loves his dog, and any solution more complicated than remembering one password and clicking one button is going to be too much change for him to get around to doing itOnboarding new users securely is in the forefront of most minds in my industry because the current standard is a 12 word phrase written on paper, which most users throw in a cloud solution or screenshot.
The stakes are even higher in crypto where you’re protecting, without recourse, large sums of value. Passkeys are a critically needed solution for my industry. But they need coupled with a social or offline storage recovery mechanism.