Passkeys do marginally improve security against MITM and phishing attacks, but they are primarily for protecting the lowest common denominator from themselves: people who re-use passwords and/or don't use a password manager.
If you use multiple devices throughout the day, registering passkeys in all of these systems becomes a big headache with O(m*n) complexity, so putting the passkeys in a password manager is the only realistic solution. But this still breaks the login flow for a very common use case: how do I log in on a device that I don't own? With a password in a password manager I at least have the option of manually typing the password.
The biggest problem, though, is how users are pushed into it without any warning or knowledge of what they're signing up for. I've accidentally set up passkeys just by clicking an okay button a few times in the past and had to go back and figure out how to undo it after being blocked from login on another computer (which computer was I on again?).
As an IT manager weak and/or re-used passwords are an absolute scourge. Ideally every time you set a passkey you'd also add an OTP Authenticator factor as fallback. Passkeys are incredibly useful and relatively secure when pair with biometric authorization (touch/face ID). I agree with a lot of the points about consumer level use, but still think they're net positive compared with bad password (re)use. I'd advocate for email recover as a decent fallback, but there's only so much you can do when the average user won't establish a base line of security for their primary account and access point.
Security is frustrating and it's hard to get people to do the bare minimum to establish secure access to their services.
drtz · · focus · HN ↗
If you use multiple devices throughout the day, registering passkeys in all of these systems becomes a big headache with O(m*n) complexity, so putting the passkeys in a password manager is the only realistic solution. But this still breaks the login flow for a very common use case: how do I log in on a device that I don't own? With a password in a password manager I at least have the option of manually typing the password.
The biggest problem, though, is how users are pushed into it without any warning or knowledge of what they're signing up for. I've accidentally set up passkeys just by clicking an okay button a few times in the past and had to go back and figure out how to undo it after being blocked from login on another computer (which computer was I on again?).
krsw · · focus · HN ↗
Security is frustrating and it's hard to get people to do the bare minimum to establish secure access to their services.