Comment by WorldMaker

8 days ago

Supporting physical security keys and passkeys is basically the same thing. It's the same APIs and standard (Webauthn). Most of the nonsense like attestation is partly left over from physical security keys but unnecessary and finally optional for passkeys. That's the irony of all this: passkeys were the attempt at "weakening" physical security key requirements for general use consumer things. They stay around for enterprises that still desire requiring specific physical keys. The complicated standards for the huge variety in key types and the relying party having any metadata on which key type was used is a relic of decades of backwards compatibility with physical security keys. Passkeys come with a standard that threatens against unattestable devices because it was built on a standard for attestable physical security keys. Not as much the other way around.

(Apple didn't join the FIDO Alliance on Passkeys until they made sure attestation was an optional feature and no longer a requirement, for consumer privacy reasons.)