this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
80 points (88.5% liked)

Technology

34904 readers
1244 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Glad to see another person who is not keen on the passkeys. I have the feeling it is being hyped and perhaps without good reasons. Therefore I was glad to share this blog post when I saw it on Mastodon. btw, the blog post author turns out to be the software developer of similar software like Authentik and Keycloak. In other words, not just the average Linux user :)

I really think that we should have just iterated on passwords. Switch to a PAKE and keep improving password-manager UX and pushing most users to auto-generated passwords. So much was lost by switching to a system that most users don’t understand.

When I search with a search engine for PAKE I don't find anything useful. Got a link ?

I like your reasoning about just using passwords. However, my experience is that a scary amount of users are using the same rather weak password for lots of different accounts. And a still scary amount of users does get tricked into phishing emails. What I like for myself is have a bunch of security keys and use them as much as possible for important logins.Some applications allow for five different security keys to be configured.And this could theoretically also be a way to use 2FA within teams. One team person does the login, adds a key, then let's the second team member put in their key and so on.

I wrote a blog about this a while ago. https://kevincox.ca/2022/04/07/passwords/

Thanks. I see you shared it two years ago on Lobsters and got a fair amount of comments. 👍

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password-authenticated_key_agreement

Cloudflare also had a fairly good post a while ago about a newer PAKE algorithm: https://blog.cloudflare.com/opaque-oblivious-passwords

a scary amount of users are using the same rather weak password for lots of different accounts

This is true, but you can force them to use a random password just as easily as you can force them to use a randomly generated key. The end UX can look basically identical if you want it to. My point is that this is basically a UX problem. Instead of just making the change we are inventing this new protocol to shuffle along a UX change at the same time. Maybe part of this is because the change has major unaddressed downsides that would be too obvious to slip by if made as an incremental upgrade to passwords.

One team person does the login, adds a key, then let’s the second team member put in their key and so on.

There is no reason you can't have multiple passwords associated with an account.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But... PAKE is used as a method for ongoing exchange of messages, you wouldnt avoid using a password when authenticating, which is the whole point of this debacle.

In really don't see it that complex, in my last job IT installed a passkey in my laptop, which then Microsoft used to login and thorough its SSO, I just stopped using passwords altogether after logging into my PC itself. This is way more secure for the average Joe than having 5 postists with passwords pasted in the sides of the monitors. Yes this is way more common then you think, there's a reason passwords need to be rotated all the freaking time.

Once rolled out, workers didn't have to do anything to authenticate, as long as they were using the work laptop the company assumed that the used was the one using it, since the laptop was registered to the user, and it was way more comfortable.

It's not really that hard to explain to people. Sending passwords is insecure because if an attacker gets the password, you lost. With passkeys, once you set it up, google/microsoft/pepapig.com will send a request to authenticate to your phone, where you will just say "yes" and they will talk with each other to give you access. If an attacker gets hold of that message, it doesn't get anything of value because each time pepwpig.com and your phone talk with each other, they say different stuff and the attacker would just have yesterday's responses, so they lose.

Old people won't adopt it unless forced, just like they adopted special passwords by adding 1 and * to whatever stupid word they use and writing it next to their work monitor, in the office. They just won't. Either IT automates everything for them or anything we develop will get completely bypassed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

But… PAKE is used as a method for ongoing exchange of messages

I don't know what you mean.

In really don’t see it that complex, in my last job IT installed a passkey in my laptop

They can also install a randomly generated password just as easily.

Sending passwords is insecure because if an attacker gets the password, you lost

That is why you use a PAKE, you don't send the password.

Old people won’t adopt it unless forced

They also won't adopt passkeys unless forced. What is the difference?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

This PAKE post by Cloudflare is way over my head, but very good to see that new things are explored to make security really better.