- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Passkeys are an easy and secure alternative to traditional passwords that can help prevent phishing attacks and make your online experience smoother and safer.
Unfortunately, Big Tech’s rollout of this technology prioritized using passkeys to lock people into their walled gardens over providing universal security for everyone (you have to use their platform, which often does not work across all platforms). And many password managers only support passkeys on specific platforms or provide them with paid plans, meaning you only get to reap passkeys’ security benefits if you can afford them.
They’ve reimagined passkeys, helping them reach their full potential as free, universal, and open-source tech. They have made online privacy and security accessible to everyone, regardless of what device you use or your ability to pay.
I’m still a paying customer of Bitwarden as Proton Pass was up to now still not doing everything, but this may make me re-evaluate using Proton Pass as I’m also a paying customer of Proton Pass. It certainly looks like Proton Pass is advancing at quite a pace, and Proton has already built up a good reputation for private e-mail and an excellent VPN client.
Proton is also the ONLY passkey provider that I’ve seen allowing you to store, share, and export passkeys just like you can with passwords!
See https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-passkeys
#technology #passkeys #security #ProtonPass #opensource
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They will have to rip Bitwarden (soon Vaultwarden) from my cold dead hands.
When are they changing their name? I didn’t even know
They aren’t. Vaultwarden is the selfhosted version.
True, it is good, but they need to speed up on passkeys for mobile as many do use mobile devices and what’s the point of having passkeys on desktop.
Proton is also the ONLY passkey provider that I’ve seen allowing you to store, share, and export passkeys just like you can with passwords!
1Password has had this for several months.
As others have mentioned, Bitwarden also has this. This really feels like an ad.
i looked at it and it literally says passkeys aren’t supported on Android right now. so this is bullshit.
Looks like they are just rolling out support for Android 14 and up.
sry my comment was not clear i meant proton.
Agreed. Saying PP four times in two sentences triggers my ad sense. Capitalism never capitulates.
I don’t see a way where this isn’t an ad, especially with the end and it’s frustrating.
Thanks I did not know that. I see they say share via the vault, but don’t specifically mention exporting, as in to a file for importing elsewhere outside 1Password. But certainly LastPass, Bitwarden and others I’d looked at were not exporting the passkeys.
This reads achingly like an advert pretenting to be a social media post. BitWarden works fine for third party pass keys on every site I’ve used it on, ta - and I can self-host it.
But you seem to have missed the heading of the post? Bitwarden still (after many months) has not rolled out passkeys to mobile devices. That was actually the point of the post, and Bitwarden needs to start innovating a bit faster as others are overtaking in regard to passkeys. So, you can’t be using Bitwarden for your passkey logins on mobile?
Bitwarden only have not done it because their Android and IOS apps are using xamarin which prevents this implementation at it’s current version, so they have to rewrite app first. It’s not a matter “they have to start innovating”. It’s a technical problem that takes time to solve.
Ah thanks for explaining that. It just makes it then difficult to fully move to passkeys with Bitwarden, which is why I’ve been waiting so long, and why I never stayed using Google or Apple’s passkeys.
I hear Bitwarden is redoing its mobile app, so maybe with that redesign will come some passkey support. 🤷♂️🤞
Why are you trying to frame this as a race? The vast majority of users don’t care about passkeys yet.
The point of the post is completely irrelevant because Bitwarden already announced they’re implementing this in the next release of the app already.
It’s not a race and I would not even start to use passkeys until I know they can move with me across devices and OSs. Also, most sites that do offer passkeys, still offer highly insecure password resets which really undermines the security that passkeys should offer. I waited a long time for Bitwarden to start with passkeys, and they were going to be the answer to fully portable passkeys (I’ve been waiting so that I know my passkeys will work across all my devices and OSs). Now I’m waiting for mobile implementation before I can get going. I do hope they will also be offering exporting of passkeys, like you can currently export your passwords to other services.
Is this an ad?
No, an ad would have come out when it was launched, and an ad would try to sell something?
an ad would try to sell something?
You’re trying to sell people on Proton over Bitwarden.
Firstly, the point was made that the passkey functionality in Proton Pass is free (no account needed or “selling”) and that is for unlimited logins. Anyone can just use it. I pay for, and am still using Bitwarden. I posted about this because it is interesting that Pass has implemented passkeys for mobile, while I still wait for Bitwarden, so I’m interested in testing this out with Proton Pass. I post about all sorts of things that I find interesting, and sometimes I do switch my services across if I find it can match or better what I already use. That’s the bottom line.
I was just as interested when I was considering moving from LastPass to Bitwarden, but then I was accused of “selling” free Bitwarden to people. Everyone must make up their own minds as their circumstances are different. But if no-one posted about what they found interesting, we’d have no Lemmy, and we’d all forever just stay stuck on whatever we personally know. Certainly Bitwarden and Proton Pass are not the only good password managers out there, but this week I was interested to see an article about Proton Pass, and I had not even known they’d rolled out passkeys yet. It seems like quite a few others did not either.
I’m sure others also post about what new stuff 1Password has just rolled out, and I’d be interested to hear about that too. That is how I decide whether I want to try something better.
If I wanted to try to sell something, I’m sure Proton Pass probably has some loyalty link for paid accounts, but no, you did not see me sharing anything like that. I mentioned the access was free.
Doesn’t Bitwarden already have that feature? https://bitwarden.com/passwordless-passkeys/
Bitwarden currently only supports storing and using Passkeys via the browser extension. You cannot use them on mobile.
But the Bitwarden extension works on Android Firefox, so you could probably use it that way.
Ah I see. Hope to see it brought to mobile soon.
They’re rewriting their mobile apps to make it possible
I don’t think it has the ability to export/share.
Like in a file?
Bitwarden already syncs between PC and phone.
By “Share”, I assumed with other password managers that supported PassKeys.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a file, it could be the config like a TOTP code is.
When you say bitwarden syncs between PC and phone, which service does it sync with on these platforms? I didn’t know bitwarden synced with any other service.
Yes, but as I said, as of yesterday still not implemented on mobile.
Yep, the title is incorrect.reading is hard
Can I get an explanation on what exactly passkeys are? I already use bitwarden for passwords, is there any good reason to switch to passkeys if that works for me?
It’s ssh keys, basically.
Every service will have a keypair generated, managing the client keys is what all the passkey managers are doing.
Passkeys are great in that they are cryptographically secure, no guessed password issues. But now the client has to manage the keys. If you have a good workflow with your password manager, then passkeys are a strict improvement. If your workflow isn’t great, then don’t worry a out it, the benefit over strong passwords isn’t huge yet.
Not really, right now as the password resets all undermine passkeys for many sites. One day if/when passwords get replaced then there will be a need, but that is a long way off probably. A good random password along with any 2FA is really good enough for most cases, and Bitwarden already does that very well along with even random e-mail addresses.
Passkeys are a form of passwordless authentication. You store them in Bitwarden like regular passwords, but when you want to access a site that supports them (e.g. eBay) instead of asking for you password and autofilling or copy pasting it from Bitwarden your Bitwarden pops up and asks you if you want to login and it just happens (if you have multiple passkeys associated with a site you can select which you want to use). That’s it. No password fields which get autofilled and no password in your clipboard (history).
Thanks for the explanation. From the sound of it I’ll probably stick with passwords—i like being able to copy them, cause I’m often signing in to an application, not a website, etc.
That’s a reasonable decision. While passkeys are usually considered much safer than passwords they are not really common. It is mostly the big services (Google, Microsoft, eBay) which have implemented them. Also Bitwarden only supports them on desktop as they are currently working on mobile support. But this will change and as they follow a standard it will be no problem to log into apps with passkeys as the support widens.
Sounds a lot like SSO no?
It is a similar experience, but you don’t need any infrastructure for it. Everything is handled by your device.
I really want to like Proton and all their shit, but they seem to heavily advertise everything they have on every software and product they have in a very intrusive and annoying way.
Simply logging into Proton mail and being bombarded by Proton promotional shit feels like Google all over again.
The app reminds me constantly that I’m a piece of shit for not supporting them by subscribing to their VPN, etc etc.
I would rather they make money from advertising their own pretty awesome services than from advertising unsustainable (environmentally, but also unsustainable for the fucking soul!) bullshit via blood sucking multinational tech companies that prey on the masses with whatever data they can automatically dig up on you. The revenue Proton makes from converting free customers to paid allows them to grow a freely available service that is a user-friendly and is a technical rival of the surveillance capitalists.
My take is:
- If you’re the sort of person that is convinced your requirements need some custom covert ops pagan voodoo self hosted data center in an old cold war era bunker, don’t let me stop you. You crack right on mate and good luck (sounds like you need it!).
- If you want the sorts of services Proton provides, but don’t want to be fucked, then Proton are a good shout.
- If you can afford it, pay for it. It makes the experience smoother and keeps a relatively small but decent company going in an ocean of massive cunts.
- If you can’t afford it and don’t want to use the free version of Proton, I hear Google and Microsoft will happily buy your soul and sell your data.
You’re just going to rub people the wrong way being condescending like that. Find another way to try and bring people to your point of view.
And no, I’m not a shill for Google or Microsoft, I’m a happily paying user of Proton’s products.
People are perfectly within their rights to be rubbed up the wrong way.
Find another way to try and bring people to your point of view
Thanks for your great example of condescension for clarity. A little unsolicited feedback though… other people, unaware of your virtuous intent, might view it as a petty attempt to belittle a stranger on the internet. Other than that, a solid comment. B+
… that’s condescending.
People are perfectly within their rights to be rubbed up the wrong way.
Except in Florida and Texas. That shit gets you arrested these days.
Or so I hear.
If you’re the sort of person that is convinced your requirements need some custom covert ops pagan voodoo self hosted data center in an old cold war era bunker, don’t let me stop you. You crack right on mate and good luck
Can you give an actual example of this or are you just making a broad accusation against anyone that uses something other than Proton?
The initial point wasn’t against supporting these services or them making money, it’s the aggressiveness of the advertising. It shows a degree of disrespect for the users when they refuse to leave them alone.
You get ads to subscribe to a service while using the free tier? Huh, that’s weird…
I haven’t noticed much beyond emails about general product news.
That’s compared to Feedly which actively would popup “hey! have you considered paying us like… 2k/yr (or maybe it was 2k/month) for some service you don’t care about that really should be part of our normal RSS product that you’re already paying like 200/yr for? Also there’s no way to turn these notifications off and we’re going to keep sending them periodically. Oh! And we’re not going to work on anything you might find interesting or reasonably priced, so … have fun!”
When I set up my account, then during setup they asked if I wanted to get email notifications about their products and later it is also available and clearly marked in the account settings. I’d assume that if I turned those setting off, I’d stop getting those emails.
That being said, I have gotten 8 notifications from them over the last 3 months. I have all newsletters and promotional content enabled. This isn’t much imo
And yet I missed their announcement about their passkeys. In today’s competitive world, I think any company that does not advertise in some way, is really not going to survive (as much as I don’t like ads either). Maybe I don’t see that much as I am paying.
Do you have emails from them disabled? I got an email about the launch, but yeah, I haven’t seen much mention of it elsewhere.
No just have “Proton for Business newsletter” disabled but I see many of their mails say only once a quarter etc. So seems they don’t send out every month.
I was getting these advertisements, even as a paid user, just before Christmas. Multiple other people have complained about it both here and on Reddit too. It seems to have gotten better now, but I know a few people have been quite turned off by this.
You can disable it from proton mail settings
Are you talking about the emails?
Yes
I wasn’t 🙃
Oh yeah the UI stuff was a bug, they’ve fixed it already
This is simply not true. If your products are good your customers will do the marketing for you.
all devices
Lies, there’s no Linux app yet. As usual, Proton Inc continues to treat Linux users as third-class citizens, all whilst claiming they care about privacy and security.
Edit: They don’t even have a macOS app yet lol.
I tried their mail app, it’s Electron garbage. I love all their other stuff tho.
TBH KeepassXC + SyncThing is superior in every way.
I’m using the browser add-on in Linux across all my browsers. I do have the Bitwarden app for Linux, but to be honest I never open it as it is a pain to have to open a separate app, and then copy and paste. Isn’t it just more seamless to let it replace the browser password manager on Linux? If I want to tidy up my Bitwarden vault, I also do that in the browser.
Devops here. I use the 1Password cli constantly to feed auth tokens and passwords and identity overrides into other shell commands. I’d lose my shit if I had to keep opening my browser to login to all my various workflows. The CLI even integrates with biometrics so my hands never leave the keyboard
I really really like proton pass, was using Google password manager prior but I primarily use Firefox and Firefox’s password syncing is just bad. Proton pass has been a surprisingly reliable password manager.
It does seem to have innovated quite quickly. I’m still using Bitwarden as I have the paid access to biometrics etc, and it has a nice tweak also to add unique e-mails for every login, etc. But I’m interested to see where Proton Pass will be in another few months, seeing I’m already paying for their service, and maybe I can consolidate my expenses a bit. I actually got drawn into paid Proton by leaving ExpressVPN, which I needed for Netflix, and then found Proton (with one or two others) were the only one’s handling Netflix’s geofencing quite well. Looking at options is always good.
Vaultwarden is completely in my hands though
True, just hope they eventually get passkeys for mobile.
I don’t like passkeys yet because they’re implemented poorly on most platforms, IMHO, because they replace two factors with one. Some don’t let you also turn on two factor auth at all which is dumb, but the ones that do then often only have options that use your device as a factor either through text or email. So if the passkey is your phone and you add text messages as the 2 factor option, that’s still your phone. Or if your passkey is your laptop and you’re logged into your email on the laptop, it’s just one.
Passkeys are 2FA
Could either you or @[email protected] explain this for me? If all that’s required to log in using a passkey is access to a single device/provider (e.g. Proton Pass in this case) how does it replace 2FA?
For an authentication flow to qualify as two factor authentication, a user must verify at least two factors - and each must be from the following list:
- something they know, like a password
- something they have, like a phone or security key
- something they are - fingerprints, facial recognition (like FaceID), iris scans, etc…
Passkeys require you to verify a password or authenticate with biometrics. That’s one factor. The second factor is having the passkey itself, as well as the device it’s on.
If you login to your password manager on your phone and use your fingerprint to auth, that’s two factors right there.
But authentication to access the passkey is on a remote device. So the server doesn’t have any information about if or how authentication was performed for the person to access the key. If they use a 4 digit pin or, worse, the 4 point pattern unlock, it’s easy enough to brute force on most devices.
This is also why using a password manager is not two factor authentication. It is one factor on your device and one factor on the server. But no one monitors the security logs on the device to detect brute force attacks and invalidate keys. Most don’t even wipe the device if the pin is being brute forced.
None of what you’re saying has anything to do with whether an authentication flow is effectively implementing two-factor authentication.
The server doesn’t need to know details about which two factors you used. If you auth with a passkey and it knows that passkeys themselves require an additional factor to be used, then it knows that you’re using 2FA.
If they use a 4 digit pin or, worse, the 4 point pattern unlock, it’s easy enough to brute force on most devices.
This is true, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t qualify as an authentication factor. Nobody should use a 4-6 digit PIN for their phone, but this is a matter of individual security preferences and risk tolerance. In a corporate setting, the corporation can set the minimum standard here in accordance with their own risk tolerance.
My password could be “password123” and it would still be one factor.
I’m not saying it doesn’t count as authentication, it just doesn’t count as authentication to the security of the server directly. That’s the device’s security and configured by the user, not the server. And user devices are very prone to exploits to the point that many law enforcement agencies don’t even bother asking for a password anymore to access a device.
So, let’s move to a physical model as an example. Let’s say you have a door. It has a very simple door handle lock. You keep your key inside a hotel safe. Sure it might be difficult to get the key if they had to enter the hotel room, cut open the safe in place, and get the key while they’re standing in front of the secure door, exposed. But that’s dumb. They could just as easily grab the safe out of the room and open it later where there’s room for proper equipment, use a known exploit for the particular safe, or use other exploits all out of view of the door/server and at any time until the user realizes you know how to open their safe, because the door/server will never find out. Once that safe is open, you have not just the key to the door, but the key to all locks the user uses since now we only have “something you have” factors and the user uses only one device. Just like when we only had “something you know” factors and the user uses the same password everywhere.
So what does the passkey help with? It makes the lock and thus the key itself more complex. This makes it so that brute force attacks against the server are more difficult. But it doesn’t solve anything that existing TOTP over text messages didn’t solve, other than some complexity, and it eliminated the password (something you know) factor at the server. Something a lot of companies are already doing and we already know from experience is a bad practice. It has changed the hacking target to the device rather than the person. But still just one target, you don’t need both. Sure it’s better than a really bad password that’s reused everywhere. But it’s not better than a really good password unique to a site that’s only stored in a password manager on the user’s device that requires a separate master password to access (outside of MitM attacks that TOTP mitigates).
Now, what if we have a door with two locks, one that requires a code, and one that requires you to have access to a device. Now in order to attack the door, you need two factors right at the time you’re standing at the door. Also, there’s probably a camera at the door and someone paid to check it periodically when someone tries too many times, which isn’t the case in the user’s safe/device. So even if you get the key from the user, you still need to brute force the second lock efficiently or you need to implement a second exploit to get the second factor ahead of time. This is the idea of two factors at the server and the current state of things before passkeys.
Getting physical access to users’ devices is more difficult than compromising their passwords, so in that sense, transitioning that one factor is a net improvement in terms of reducing the number of compromises for a given service.
Except for e2ee accounts, which I suspect Passkeys don’t support in the first place (at least, not without caching the password on your device), law enforcement can access your account’s data without ever needing your password. If you’re concerned about law enforcement breaking into your device and you’re not using a unique 16+ character passcode with it set to wipe the device after a certain number of attempts, that’s on you.
I’m not sure about the state of affairs on Android, but the most popular and powerful tool used by law enforcement to extract data from iOS devices only recently gained support for iOS 17 and it doesn’t have the ability to bypass passwords on a device that isn’t accepting FaceID; it just has the ability to brute force them. A password with sufficient entropy mitigates this attack. (It’s unclear if it’s able to bypass auth when FaceID is enabled, but I could see it going either way.)
You said a couple of things that I specifically want to address:
But it doesn’t solve anything that existing TOTP over text messages didn’t solve, other than some complexity, and it eliminated the password (something you know) factor at the server.
and
outside of MitM attacks that TOTP mitigates
Text-message based TOTP - or SMA 2FA - is incredibly vulnerable. In many cases, it can be compromised without the user even realizing. A user with a 4 digit PIN (even if that PIN is 1234) and a Passkey on their device is much less vulnerable than a user using SMS 2FA with a password used across multiple services.
If a user cares deeply about security, they likely already have a set of security keys (like the YubiKey 5C) that support U2F / WebAuthn, and they’ll add passkeys for their most sensitive services to those devices, protected by unique, high entropy PINs. This approach is more secure than using an equally high entropy password and U2F / WebAuthn if the latter isn’t secured with a PIN, since these devices are extremely secure and wipe their contents after 8 failed PIN attempts, but the password is transmitted to the server, which receives it in plaintext and stores it hashed, generally outside of a secure enclave, making the password vulnerable, e.g., if grabbed from server memory, or to a brute force attack on the hash if the server (which could be undetected and only involve read access to the db server), meaning a simple theft of the security key would be all that was needed to compromise the account (vs needing the PIN that is never transmitted anywhere).
And app-based TOTP doesn’t mitigate MITM at all. The only thing it does is add a timing component requirement, which current MITM phishing attacks have incorporated. To mitigate such an attack you need Passkeys, Webauthn, or U2F as an authentication factor. To bypass this the attackers need to compromise the service itself or a certificate authority, which is a much taller task.
The other thing is that we know most users reuse passwords and we know that sites will be compromised, so:
- best case scenario, salted password hashes will be leaked
- likely scenario, password hashes will be leaked,
- and worst case scenario, plain text passwords will be leaked
and as a result, that user’s credentials for a different site will be exposed. For those users, Passkeys are a vast improvement over 1FA, because that vulnerability doesn’t exist.
Another factor is the increased visibility of Passkeys is resulting in more sites supporting them - U2F / Webauthn didn’t have great adoption. And getting these into the hands of more users, without requiring them to buy dedicated security keys, is a huge boost.
For the vast majority of users, passkeys are an improvement in security. For the few for whom they aren’t, those users likely know that, and they still benefit from increased adoption of a MITM immune authentication method, which they can choose on a site-by-site basis. And even they can benefit from increased security by storing passkeys on a security key.
A passkey that’s generated on any given device is tied to that device, and is never sent to the server you’re authenticating to. What’s sent instead is a time based challenge/response that functions similarly to TOTP except that it’s not based on a shared secret like TOTP is. Since the Passkey is both a file, and is tied to the device you generated it on, it satisfied the something you have factor. Then in order to use a Passkey to authenticate, you need to unlock access to it using either biometrics (something you are) or a PIN (something you know).
Now storing your passkeys in a password manager does muddy the process of it a bit. The “something you have” part is no longer a device, but the key file itself, which is still arguably “something you have” but it is to a degree less secure than keeping it tied to a device. But you can think of storing passkeys in a password manager similarly to storing your TOTP in your password manager. It’s a tradeoff.
I know that with 1Password, even if I authenticate to my vault using my master password, when I go to use any particular passkey, it still requires biometrics.
The real question is why the fuck is this guy passing for two password managers if not more, especially if he isn’t even using one?
I’m not 100% clear on the pricing. Do I get this for “free” as part of a premium subscription to Proton Mail/Drive/Calendar or is this a separate subscription?
This is included in the premium subscription
Probably best to see their comparison but free account mainly excludes Integrated 2FA authenticator and only has two vaults, but unlimited logins. I’m on the unlimited account (for VPN and mail) so can’t check for sure.
Does it beat Bitwarden though? Bitwardan has supported at least 2 services for me using passkeys ,one of which is google.
I might be misunderstanding this,but it doesn’t seem like proton beat anyone to anything.
Edit for info: https://bitwarden.com/passwordless-passkeys/
They’re talking about the fact that Bitwarden doesn’t support passkeys on mobile
Right,yeah,that’s true for mobile indeed.
Sad that these sort of features are paywalled.
Why shouldn’t these features require money?
It’s $10 per YEAR. This is an extremely reasonable price given the importance of the service.
Bitwarden employees need to eat too.
I’d be perfectly okay with them just charging for Bitwarden, period. Instead they pretend it’s free but charge premium for all the most effective security features, including 2FA to their own services. Effectively it creates a group of people that use Bitwarden without access to these security features but complacent enough to not seek alternatives that would offer these features at a price acceptable for them (possibly free, like KeepassXC).
Bottom line: security shouldn’t be a premium feature. It should be either available or not at all. Never as a premium within the service.
For logging in, Bitwarden supports TOTP, email, and FIDO2 WebAuthn on the free plan. It only adds Yubikey OTP and Duo support at the paid tier, and WebAuthn is superior to both of those methods. This is an improvement that they made fairly recently - back in September 2023.
The other features that the free plan lacks are:
- the 1 GB of integrated, encrypted file storage. This is a convenience that is nice to have, but not essential to a password manager.
- the integrated TOTP generator. This is a convenience that many argue is actually a security downgrade (under the “putting all your eggs in one basket” argument).
- Upgraded vault health reports - free users get username data breach reports but not weak / reused password reports. This is the main area where your criticism is valid, but as far as I know free competitors don’t offer this feature, either. I looked at KeepassXC and didn’t see this mentioned.
- Emergency access (basically a trusted contact who can access your vault under some circumstances). This isn’t essential, either, and the mechanisms they add to ensure security of it cost money to provide.
- Priority support - free users get 24/7 support by email, which should be good enough
I wasn’t aware they added WebAuthn to the free plan recently. That’s great to hear, thanks for the correction!
It’s not paywalled. It’s not yet implemented in mobile bitwarden apps. It probably won’t be paywalled once implemented because it’s not paywalled in extension where it’s already implemented
2FA is a paid feature in Bitwarden. That’s the feature we were talking about.
Edit: fuck me for explaining myself
You’re getting downvoted because that, in fact, isn’t the feature we were talking about.
2FA and passkeys are different
Has anyone used pass keys? I have been hesitant to try them out. Using them, do they basically keep you logged in all the time to a given site?
I use passkeys for some sites, but have been reluctant to go all in until I’m sure all my devices can support them. I’m not always going to have my desktop with me, and likewise my phone’s battery can be flat, etc. I’ve always wanted passkeys to first sync across all my devices, and ideally to be exportable and brought into a different service. Right now you can export your 900+ passwords, and import them into a different service if you want to move. You can’t do that with Apple or Google passkeys.
