“Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations to implement thanks to new initiatives the FIDO Alliance announced on Monday.
“Passkeys,” the secure authentication mechanism built to replace passwords, are getting more portable and easier for organizations to implement thanks to new initiatives the FIDO Alliance announced on Monday.
The lock-in effect of passkeys is something that this protocol aims to solve though. The “only managed by your device” is what keeps us locked in, if there is no solution to export and import it on another device.
The protocol aims to make it easy to import and export passkeys so you can switch to a different provider. This way you won’t be stuck if you create passkeys e.g. on an Apple device and want to switch to e.g. Bitwarden or an offline password manager like KeyPassXC
That’s between platforms though. I like my stuff self-managed. Unless it provenly works with full offline solutions I’ll remain sceptical.
Bitwarden / Vaultwarden is a popular available working solution for self-hosting and self-managing passkeys (as well as passwords).
TBH I don’t see a reason why something as simple as a password manager needs a server, selfhosted or not. I don’t get the obsession with syncing everything, so would rather stick with normal KeepassXC.
Have you never lost your password device (phone, laptop, etc) suddenly and unexpectedly? That’s when you really want that file synced somewhere else. But then it’s too late. Bonus on many password vault servers is shared folders, so one can share their garage door code with the family but keep the bank account details to oneself.
No, but this is very unlikely because I do keep regular backups manually. I just don’t feel the need for it to be a constantly-online server.
And who forces all the corps to correctly implement that protocol? Getting you locked in is in all of their interests, after all.
I think it‘s fair to remain skeptical but the big organizations were part of the development, so there seems to be some interest. And it‘s not always in their interest to lock users in, when it also prevents users from switching to their platform.