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Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them (nonfunctional.substack.com)
submitted 3 days ago by shrek_is_love@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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[-] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Problem is passkey generation, expiration logic, etc., is often not well protected, so if a hacker is able to get it, they may not be able to target a specific account, but they can target random accounts with semi-bruteforce since there's no username to limit tries against or lock the account if there's too many tries. Just use a botnet and start throwing probable keys at it and you're likely to get a few.

Also, with a password repository, I protect that as exceptionally as I can, but I can always change my passwords and would do so of that was compromised. But I'm not talking about the passkeys of an individual being stolen, I'm talking about a compromised site having very little way of determining of a hacker has gotten enough information to narrow brute forcing down to a relatively manageable level with a botnet and using that to access random accounts for personal information scraping. And the user may have no idea it's happened to them since the bad tries never were associated with any login.

[-] Sina@beehaw.org 6 points 3 days ago

Just use a botnet and start throwing probable keys at it and you’re likely to get a few.

This is not plausible, would take billions+ years to stumble upon just one with a botnet that has all online PCs on Earth utilized.

Remote attestation is the real problem with where passkeys are going.

[-] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago

You'd be surprised how poorly most modern web developers (especially LLMs) understand cryptography and the importance of protecting secrets, often storing them in plain text in poorly protected code repos, etc. On a site with a large enough user base and access to that information, it's absolutely possible to reduce the number of tries to hits to a manageable level for a distributed botnet that can't easily be blocked.

this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
245 points (83.2% liked)

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