Security vendors join forces to make passkeys more portable for everyone | Bitwarden Blog
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FIDO Alliance publishes industry standards for consumers to easily and securely transfer passkeys across platforms and password managers.

Looks like a huge amount of security vendors are working to have a secure and open standard for passkey portability between platforms.

It is always good to see major collaboration in the security space like this considering the harsh opinions that users of some of these vendors have toward many of the others. I just wish apps and sites would stop making me login with username and password if passkeys are meant to replace that lol.

  • @[email protected]English
    82•2 days ago

    Seems like people in the comments are misunderstaning the point entirely. This protocol is about import and export from password managers and not about having them synced between devices. It would prevent a lock in effect. This is a great development!

    FIDO Alliance’s draft specifications – Credential Exchange Protocol (CXP) and Credential Exchange Format (CXF) – define a standard format for transferring credentials in a credential manager including passwords, passkeys and more to another provider in a manner that ensures transfer are not made in the clear and are secure by default.

      • @[email protected]
        1•10 hours ago

        I personally like it. Imo passkeys should optimally be device bound and the private keys should be stored in TPM or equivalent and be non-exportable.

        • @[email protected]
          2•8 hours ago

          Well, nothing is stopping you to keep passkeys only in one place, why force others to do what you like? Now we have options and less friction to switch to a competitor. Which results in more competition and that results in better products. Well theoretically…

          • @[email protected]
            1•8 hours ago

            I just don’t think synced passkeys should be the default for example iOS.

            What Microsoft is doing with device-bound passkeys using Windows Hello is imo great.

            • @[email protected]
              1•38 minutes ago

              So microsoft does not require that you backup your passkeys? I thought that was the norm in all OS 😅

              I think that passkeys are backed up in cloud by default isn’t that bad for the average person, since they are likely not understanding passkeys (at least right now) and don’t get that they loose access to accounts, if they disable oldscool Passwords only use one passkey on one device for that account.

        • @Spotlight7573English
          1•8 hours ago

          When most sites refer to passkeys, they’re typically talking about the software-backed kind that are stored in password managers or browsers. There are still device-bound passkeys though. Also since they’re just FIDO/WebAuthn credentials under the hood, you can still use hardware-backed systems to store them if you really want.

          While you’re right that device bound and non-exportable would be best from a security standpoint, there needs to be sufficient adoption of the tech by sites for it to be usable at all and sufficient adoption requires users to have options that have less friction/cost associated with them, like browser and password-manager based ones.

          Looking at it through the lens of replacing passwords instead of building the absolutely highest-security system helps explain why they’re not limited to device-bound anymore.