Comment by gumby271
5 days ago
I think this is exactly the "Passkeys are a trap" argument though right? If you lock yourself into a single vendor, everything is easy and beautiful. If you choose a diverse set of vendors, it sucks so much more than passwords and password managers ever did.
Keepassxc and strongbox passkey integrations seem pretty good on all of the OSes and browsers I've used.
I think passkeys make a messy credential situation even messier, but make a tidy credential situation even tidier.
Good thing the FIDO group is already trying to block key synchronization with keypass and other open source managers...
That wasn't FIDO as a group. That was one vocal member and even their employer ended up disowning the comment. It also wasn't about sync, it was about plaintext export.
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> Keepassxc and strongbox passkey integrations
Isn't that a single vendor (or two)? How is this not lock-in?
KeepassXC at least allows you to export your passkeys should you choose. The people behind passkeys do not like this. https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407
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I use nextcloud to sync my own keepass database across my devices. Both nextcloud and keepassxc are open source.
Please explain how self hosting open source software is locking me into a vendor.
If the sky falls and strongbox ceases working with mac/iOS I can use android and linux. Nobody is locking my lockbox.
Well, KeePass is self-hosted, and I hadn't heard of strongbox before, but it says on the website:
> Store your data anywhere you like, online or offline. Sync with every major cloud storage provider or your own server over WebDAV or SFTP. Use your Strongbox database with any KeePass compatible client on any platform.
On iOS devices you can import/export Passkeys between supporting password manager apps (including Apple Passwords).
In my experience, migrating between Apple Passwords and Bitwarden worked without issues, in both directions.
Wasn’t part of the point of the last article that some of the various methods we call “passkeys” aren’t portable?
Generally, if you want to restrict the user to use a particular authenticator, you need to own that authenticator. At that point you can have the attestation you are looking for. If you want Yubikey policy and behavior, you're gonna have to get your user a Yubikey.
The passkey provider vendors are motivated to serve their customer's needs (the end users, and secondarily enterprise deployments) over non-customer needs.
So Apple platform support (for example) will only send an attestation when one is configured via MDM. Your provisioned work device can indicate to work systems that it is in policy.
The compatibility-limiting risk, if it exists, is more likely from regulators putting their hands on the scale and pushing for security policies that would prevent synchronization and backup, and requiring attestations to make sure those policies are in effect.
Most "Passkey" branded approaches are portable. The "not portable" subset of Passkeys is primarily backwards compatibility with things like Yubikeys. That's also what attestation is mostly for, backwards compatibility with applications and Enterprises that still need "this is specifically the physical Yubikey I mailed this user" type keys, not as much Passkeys.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying there's a barrier that's useful to further vendor lock in. My mom is going to use Apple passwords on her iPhone. When she needs a new phone, the complexity of import/export and fear of losing access to her accounts is going to push her to buying another iPhone. It's just another avenue of lock in, like existing OS level password managers, just with an extra level of confusion for the end user.
My dad didn't like iCloud Passwords because he still uses a Windows laptop and only recently has the iCloud Passwords app been good or all that useful. We settled on 1Password a few years ago and having 1Password on his phone and setup as his default password app means that iOS uses it as the default Passkey app as well. "It just works."
The vendors could use it to enhance lock in, but for the most part the vendors all seem in agreement that the rising tide safety to float all boats of Passkeys is worth investing in making them friendly, especially to non-technical users, and to some extent try to avoid direct lock-in.
But can you use Apple Password app on an Android device?
If that's the argument, it's bull. If you use Apple hardware, you're not locked in and required to use Apple's default Passwords manager.
Microsoft Authenticator, Bitwarden, 1Password, etc. all support storing passkeys and support multiple hardware platforms.
It's no different than making your own decision on which password manager you want to use.
brother I locked myself in long before the passkey showed up
I mean yeah, customer lock in has been Apple's business model for a long ass time, that's not surprising.
Mostly, though, it is not true lock-in, as in they mostly don't force you to do things their way. They encourage it, make the features pretty seamless to use, etc, so that you want to stay in their system, but they generally permit you to use whatever tools you want.
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The fact that the password manager someone might use on another system is a complete piece of crap does not mean passkeys are an Apple lock-in attempt.
There are an open standard. You just have terrible software.
My issue isn't with the standard, but if all implementations lead to the same shitty experience of 3 different apps begging to store and use my passkeys, then something isn't working right. In my case, the terrible software is Apple's Mac OS, Google's Chrome and/or Firefox, and sometimes Bitwarden still acting weird. Lets not even get into how wild Windows acts when a passkey shows up.
Saying it's an open standard, and that it's just all the major players I'm forced to interact with that make it suck isn't very helpful. That's like the people that say "Don't like iOS? Build your own successful mobile OS lol"
I’m not saying built your own mobile OS.
I’m sorry you have multiple pieces of software that want to be in charge, but aren’t passwords the same? Because Chrome and Firefox both want me to use them for my passwords. It’s not a problem unique to Passkeys.
It’s just everyone ignoring user preferences to try to score stickiness.
As the previous article says, some passkeys are open, while others require lock-in, and megacorporations deliberately create confusion between the two.
What lock in? The attention this article debunks and no one uses?
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