If I leave a post-it note of passwords on my monitor inside a vault to which only I have access, it’s not a big deal. That’s the point of the “airtight hatch” metaphor.
If I leave a post-it note of passwords on my monitor inside a vault to which only I have access, it’s not a big deal. That’s the point of the “airtight hatch” metaphor.
I think we've moved away from the secure perimeter thinking and towards defense in depth - if that list of passwords helps you get somewhere other than the vault, removing the post-it improves security. Vaults get infiltrated all the time - and often in partial ways like being able to see into the vault but not reach in.
Defence in depth matters, but an analysis here shows that the same mechanism used to breach the outer layers (getting administrative access) can be used to breach the next layer (more thoroughly prodding Edge or Chrome to give up passwords).
Right; but in the scenario of this Tweek, you've invited someone untrustworthy into the vault and are then freaking out because they can see the post-it note of passwords. It is inherently irrational.
This issue is inherently unfixable by ANY password manager, because the process model of the underlying OS isn't itself secure. No obfuscation will work, because the password manager itself needs to de-obfuscation it before use (and that memory too is dump-able).
All adding in-memory obfuscation does it make ignorant people feel better, while not moving the security needle even an inch.
I think we’re largely in agreement. I do think there’s some benefit in reducing the amount of time that a password is in cleartext in memory. But it’s pretty far down the list.
> This issue is inherently unfixable by ANY password manager, because the process model of the underlying OS isn't itself secure
Usually the confidential bits are hardware isolated away from the supervisor (host kernel/OS) in Enclaves/TEEs, Realms, Secure Elements, Security chips, etc.
No, that is actually very rare, not typical. Do you have any examples of password managers that do that?
One more reason to use hardware-bound passkeys and not passwords.
True. But then your hardware dies, and you're locked out of every account you own. It is objectively good security, but has a ton of usability headaches yet to be really solved.
I've seen orgs move to passkeys only, then offer reset-questions (e.g. city of first job, etc); because the Customer Service volume/workflow wasn't figured out.
> But then your hardware dies
A lot of services have password reset email features. If the email account has passkey you're screwed. But restore by snail mail can be possible but slow (for paid services). More secure? Don't know but same category of problems already known due to sim swapping attacks in mobile sector. But for sure the Mail account is a high value target.
Storing passkeys in a database may be possible but complex to do it right e.g. backup verification, avoiding to leak while backup etc.
Edit:
Banking has no selfservice password reset. A lot of work for customer support due to identification. Nobody wants to do that for free and if the accounts are freenyou may get DOSed by bots which trigger passwort resets.
oh lawd, yes it does come down to 'who has the power to reset your account', and very few people want to take the path of 'no one has the power' in the case of lost credentials.
>your hardware dies
Or your backpack gets stolen.
Oops.
I swear, people who idolize passkey security must never travel anywhere.
PS: "just have more devices with passkeys", they invariably say.
Yeah right because people are made of money, everyone has the forethought, and a 2nd laptop in the US is a great asset when you're in Poland and can't login anywhere.
I've been avoiding passkeys but more and more websites are trying to push them, and one website I use now requires them. I've already got a password manager! I don't need to change everything again!
Your password manager almost certainly already has baked-in passkey support.
It does, but what's your point? Why should I redo everything?
Nobody is asking you to?
The subject here is literally websites trying to push passkeys on users. That is who is asking us to.
About every week now Amazon tries to trick me into creating a passkey. It doesn't even ask, it just goes ahead and triggers my browser passkey creation mechanism without my consent. PayPal recently tried to force me to create one too and I had to kill and restart the app because that was the only way to skip it. I'll stick to my password with 2FA, thanks.
It's wildly obnoxious that browsers don't let you generally suppress these prompts.
And if you take the nuclear option and strip your browser of WebAuthn support, then you obviously can't use any passkeys, which doesn't work for me - I have two sites where I do want to use passkeys (because it's the only way to avoid SMS-based MFA on every login), but I never want to see passkey prompts for any other sites.
We have now gone from having to “redo everything” to being asked to switch to a passkey by a grand total of one website.
I’ll be honest I’ve heard a lot of griping about passkeys but I have gone out of my way to switch over to them and have had precisely zero issues over the dozens of sites that I’ve bothered to make the switch on. Login flow is simpler and doesn’t rely on a browser extension guessing at login fields or trying to figure out when passwords change.
Sometimes the new thing really is just better.
>We have now gone from having to “redo everything” to being asked to switch to a passkey by a grand total of one website.
Yeah right.
When passkeys were rolled out, I was told it's OK because "passwords are always going to be required to be an available alternative".
Now we've moved the goalposts to "it's just one website".
>Sometimes the new thing really is just better.
And sometimes your backpack is stolen when you're traveling, with your phone and laptop (happened to me in Poland), and you need to log into your accounts while having none of your devices or your phone number available.
Pray tell then what.
Of course they are. Lots of websites are pushing it, including while using dark patterns. You need to sometimes explicitly cancel an onboarding flow to avoid Passkeys.
The good thing about this is they thereby also support FIDO2 hard tokens such as Yubikey. The UI is often confusing but you can always tell it to provision the key to your Yubikey rather than the OS enclave.
That doesn't help if my machine (with only a few USB ports) gets stolen/lost with the token in it. It doesn't help if some of my devices only have USB-C and some only have USB-A. It's absolutely more annoying than letting my password manager fill things in or typing in a 6 digit code from my authenticator app.
Get a better password manager? Most store passkeys.
If the passkey can be stored in the password manager, then there's no second factor and what's the point?
>"just have more devices with passkeys"
Confirms that strategy then
For people who only use passwords having an extra device can help too. Google does not necessarily permit a login with a backup code, so to me it seems ideal to grab a spare phone, log into important accounts, and store it with a trusted party/friend.
It could be very difficult to login to an account like Gmail from overseas in the event of PC+phone[+hardware key] theft. Maybe no big deal if you can port your number to a new phone right away. Or maybe the trusted friend can help (unless Google still finds the login suspicious after all, no idea there)
>It could be very difficult to login to an account like Gmail from overseas in the event of PC+phone[+hardware key] theft
Literally happened to me in Poland, which is why I avoid passkeys like the plague.
(The thief got caught months later. That didn't help me.)
>Maybe no big deal if you can port your number to a new phone right away.
T-Mobile won't mail a SIM card overseas, and I doubt others will either. There is no "maybe", it's a certainty that you won't be able to.
>Or maybe the trusted friend can help
Yeah, my wife literally mailed me SIM card to Poland.
It took over week.
And a "trusted friend" would first have had to get it somehow.
>Or maybe the trusted friend can help (unless Google still finds the login suspicious after all, no idea there)
At least I logged into my accounts from that city before the laptop and phone were stolen, so my logins were not "suspicious".
That's with a password.
_____
PS: screw Citibank's mandatory phone -based "2FA".
I travel a lot. By train, plane, and car. I also use passkeys when possible. I have multiple Yubikeys, stored in different locations. I also have a password manager, where I typically keep track of which logins aren’t yet backed up across physical tokens.
It takes a bit of effort, but it’s not impossible.
Yes, it means that in the event of catastrophic failure I might not be able to log in to some services until I get to one of the backups. I haven’t been able to imagine a scenario where that would be truly problematic.
> It takes a bit of effort
That's a wild understatement. For most users, having a password manager is already very near to the upper bound of acceptable friction.
>Yes, it means that in the event of catastrophic failure I might not be able to log in to some services until I get to one of the backups. I haven’t been able to imagine a scenario where that would be truly problematic.
No need to imagine!
Remove all passkeys from your phone and laptop, then go somewhere overseas without any of those Yubikeys.
Have fun enjoy a "not truly problematic" scenario of getting your Yibikeys from "multiple locations" you don't have access to, while being cut off from your messengers, email, bank account, etc.
Bonus points for having your card locked or stolen at the same time.
Or, imagine the backpack with your passkeys devices being stolen on an overseas trip.
Again: pray tell, then what?
> Remove all passkeys from your phone and laptop
I don't have any passkeys on my phone or laptop. They're all on the Yubikeys.
I don't really see a difference with (some) password managers, though. If you use one of the keepasses, and you lose access to the file, you're in the same situation right?
And yeah, you're right, there is a risk of inconvenience. I'm not debating that. I just choose to organise my life in such a way that it is just an inconvenience.
At my work we required a complex password <15 characters lower + cap, number and symbols.
Updated to Windows Hello and passkey.
Now I can use a 4 digit pin to login.
Yes, but the pin uses the TPM which allows other things like only ever allowing a low number of guesses before requiring a reset of the pin (using a password or other mechanism)
>It is objectively good security, but has a ton of usability headaches yet to be really solved.
Thank you, then this is still true today?
Disappointing the rollout was botched (recall cross platform and password manager difficulties). Haven’t done research since but even with some new UIs and flows promoting passkeys in the past couple months, haven’t regained my trust either.