Passkeys are here to replace passwords. When they work, it’s a seamless vision of the future. But don’t ditch your old logins just yet.

​For two years, my Netflix password has been: tricke22ry-notiLonal-freely-soSak-lice-slacken. Yes, really. It is a strong, unique password, and it ticked boxes for reducing the chances of me getting hacked. But for all its security protections, the password was a nightmare to type into an onscreen TV keyboard, and it constantly annoyed members of my family who shared my Netflix login. It’s just the tip of my password suffering, though.

I use a password manager to generate and store all the login details for the 337 accounts I’ve made—from pizza delivery and airlines to social media and online shopping—over more than a decade online. However, using a password manager compulsively and having hundreds of strong passwords likely puts me in the minority: Many people use the same password across multiple accounts or use passwords that can easily be guessed.

Unlocking Passkeys

Put very simply, when you create a passkey, the website or app you’re using generates two pieces of code. One is stored by the website or app; the other is saved on your device. When you log in, you prove it is you via a face scan, fingerprint, PIN, or however you’d usually unlock your device, and the two pieces of saved code communicate with each other. That means that creating a passkey as a user is relatively simple. All you have to do is visit your account’s security settings and go through the options to set up and save a passkey. In most cases, that’s just a few clicks.

Logging in to my Coinbase account is the perfect example of how passkeys can work. To sign in to the cryptocurrency trading app—which I largely had forgotten I had an account with—it now just takes seconds. Opening the iPhone app, I can tap on the option to sign in with a passkey, which sits alongside the choice to enter my email address or sign in with an existing Apple or Google account. I tap the passkey option, and a popup appears to ask whether I want to “Use Face ID to Sign in?” and says it will use the passkey saved in my iCloud keychain. A quick face scan later, and I am logged in. No password, no username—under 20 seconds to sign in.

However, there are a few things that caused me problems setting up passkeys—my first attempt was disastrous. In that case, my work laptop wasn’t running an operating system that supports passkeys. While waiting for it to update, the PayPal app kept glitching and wouldn’t let me complete the passkey process. Then I couldn’t create one specifically for TikTok as I used my work Google account to create the account. When I tried to set up a passkey for Amazon and needed to scan a QR code on my phone, I found that my password manager, Bitwarden, currently doesn’t support passkeys on mobile. 

Using passkeys likely means having a different mindset from how you think about passwords. There’s nothing to remember when you log in, and you have to use something else to store your passkeys. Passkeys can be stored in Apple’s, Google’s or Microsoft’s password manager systems; your browser; a dedicated password manager; or on a physical security key. I created a Google passkey on one USB key, and all I need to do to sign in is, essentially, plug it in. (All of the devices I use professionally and personally are Apple, meaning I haven’t tested passkeys between my iPhone and a Windows laptop, for instance.)

“The technology is mature, the front ends are still nascent,” Shikiar from the FIDO Alliance says. Over the past year, the FIDO alliance has also been working on user experience guidelines, he says, making it more straightforward for people to sign up and use passkeys across systems. Gary Orenstein, the chief customer officer of password manager Bitwarden, says there are multiple groups involved in the creation and rollout of passkeys, so transitioning to a world where everything is seamless takes coordination. “The standards are at one level, user expectations are at a different level,” he says. “The vendor implementations are at a third level, and they’re merging, but it takes time.”

Being able to save a passkey on essentially any device makes them more useful and means you aren’t locked in to Google’s, Microsoft’s, or Apple’s ecosystems. However, where you save a passkey is going to take some remembering. When setting up one passkey, I was asked by my password manager, browser, and the device operating system whether I wanted to save my passkey with each of them. Picking one spot and sticking to it is probably the best option.

Most of my work is done on my laptop—and it's rare that I download new apps or log out of apps on my phone—so I have been saving the majority of my passkeys in Bitwarden, which costs me $10 a year for a premium account alongside my hundreds of passwords. It works like this: When logging in to my Amazon account, I enter my username, and then Bitwarden’s browser extension pops up asking whether I want to log in with my passkey for Amazon. I press confirm, and I am logged in. It also offers the option to use my device or a hardware key to log in, and if I select one of these options, it looks for passkeys stored on my laptop.

However, as mentioned, Bitwarden doesn’t currently offer passkeys on mobile, meaning that to get the mobile-first Coinbase integration to work, I ended up saving that passkey to iCloud’s Keychain instead. Orenstein, from Bitwarden, says that making passkeys work on mobile is a priority for Bitwarden and more support should be rolling out in the coming months. The company has seen a “fantastic” adoption of passkeys so far, he says, but acknowledges people will have to get used to the change. “You still need an awareness about where it is,” Orenstein says. “I think, over time, as an industry, we can reduce the need for that awareness, hopefully to zero.”

You may not have set up any passkeys yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Tech companies are starting to make passkeys the default, and more businesses are adopting them. In the past couple of weeks, X has started allowing some people to use passkeys, and WhatsApp is bringing them to iPhones and iPads after previously rolling out passkey support for Android devices.

Leona Lassak, Blase Ur, and Maximilian Golla, three academics from Germany and the US who have researched the adoption of passkeys, say that businesses they’ve interviewed are generally positive about the adoption of passkeys and the extra security it will bring. However, it will likely take some time until the majority of websites, apps, and companies are using passkeys for everything. “I don’t think we will have a big bang in the next few months,” Lassak says. “It’s going to be a slow process, which on the way will then also catch other and smaller entities.”

As a result, passwords will still be around for a while. It’ll be a long time until I have converted my remaining 320-ish accounts to be using passkeys. And for the time being at least, those accounts where I do have passkeys will still have existing passwords that I can fall back on. “Passkeys is having fewer passwords, but not necessarily no passwords,” says Golla.

Experts recommend setting up a few passkeys whenever you come across them on your online accounts, rather than necessarily trying to change them all at once. There are guides to what websites are using passkeys already, and Google, Microsoft, and Apple all have straightforward explanations on how to create passkeys. And there are plenty of benefits to getting started now.

“They are a true password replacement that eliminate the threat of phishing, eliminate the hassle of password resets, and eliminate the liability that service providers have when they’re managing thousands, tens of thousands, or tens of millions, or billions of passwords,” Shikiar says. “It really is an entirely new way of doing user authentication.” 

The way we use passwords has been broken for a long time, but that’s finally changing. Over the past year, it has become possible to ditch the password and move to passkeys instead. Passkeys are generated codes—created using public key cryptography—that are stored on your device or in your password manager and let you log in to websites and apps using your fingerprint, face recognition, or a PIN. They can’t be guessed, leaked, or stolen, and they stop phishing attacks in their tracks, according to those behind the technology. Passkeys are widely considered to be more secure than passwords.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, GitHub, PayPal, the UK’s National Health Service, OnlyFans, Nintendo, and more than 100 websites have started supporting passkeys. More than 8 billion online accounts can set up passkeys right now, says Andrew Shikiar, the chief executive of the FIDO Alliance, an industry body that has developed the passkey over the past decade. So, I decided to kill my passwords.

For the past month, I’ve been converting as many of my accounts as possible—around a dozen for now—to use passkeys and start the move away from the password for good. Spoiler: When passkeys work seamlessly, it’s a glimpse of a more secure future for millions, if not billions, of people, and a reinvention of how we sign in to websites and services. But getting there for every account across the internet is still likely to prove a minefield and take some time. 

source​​

​by Kate O'Flasherty published 2024 Feb 02 

What will the end of passwords look like in practice and what can businesses do to prepare?

It’s widely accepted that passwords are a flawed means of security. People use weak credentials; they can be forgotten, guessed, or exposed in breaches and they’re often reused across services. 

Big tech firms including Microsoft, Apple and Google have been moving towards a passwordless future for several years, with solutions such as security keys and more recently, passkeys, starting to take off as part of multi-factor authentication (MFA) setups. 

The FIDO Alliance – which most big tech players are members of – is pushing hard for the demise of the password. But what exactly does “the end of the password” mean, in practical terms?

The idea is to eliminate dependence on passwords as a “primary mechanism for user authentication”, says Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO at the FIDO Alliance. In practical terms, this means the end of using knowledge-based “secrets” as the foundation to create, sign in, and recover online accounts, he says. 

“Passwords simply aren’t fit for purpose to protect today’s connected economy. They are too burdensome for humans to manage effectively and too easy for attackers to leverage to hack into corporate networks.”

The end of passwords: Strong alternatives

There are multiple systems that could help usher in the end of passwords, but no one solution is perfect. For example, biometrics can be secure but come with their own downsides, says Michael Jenkins, CTO at ThreatLocker. “Windows uses facial recognition, which can unlock too quickly, so you might walk away and leave your laptop exposed while it’s still unlocked.”

Fingerprint systems are a lot harder to get around, he says. “But the downside is, it may ask for your PIN number instead. These are a lot easier to guess.”

Passkeys, meanwhile, are “a great idea”, but they still need to be implemented across every website and application, says Darren James, a senior product manager at Specops Software. In addition, they can’t be used for initial login to a device and they aren’t very portable unless you store them on a token – which can be lost, broken, or stolen.

Handling passkeys is very different from passwords, says Mark Stockley, senior threat researcher at Malwarebytes. “Both users and support staff are likely to be less familiar with them, which is a speed bump to adoption.”

Yet Shikiar argues that implementing passkeys for MFA is fairly simple and won’t require most businesses to completely overall their pre-existing security processes. This is because the core functionality is built into the majority of end-user computing devices, enterprise software stacks, and identity management services, he says.

“Many organizations are already using identity management solutions such as Microsoft Entra ID, which already has support for these solutions built-in,” concurs Mark Lomas, technical architect at Probrand. 

However, the end of passwords will be easier in some sectors and businesses than in others. It is important to recognize that certain sectors could be forced to continue to use passwords, says Stewart Parkin, global CTO at Assured Data Protection. “Organizations with legacy systems may be challenged in integrating new technologies, while regulatory requirements in certain industries can create the need to continue password-based authentication.”

Software not tied to modern authentication solutions won't be able to take advantage of modern passwordless solutions, or be linked to Entra ID, says Lomas. “It's typically legacy software that will be unable to make the switch. In this case, you'll need to find other routes to add protection, such as hosting the application in a virtual desktop environment like Azure Virtual Desktop and ensuring that access is protected by a passwordless login solution.”

The end of passwords: A future-proof successor

While there are multiple alternatives to passwords, passkeys are the only successor that “has the same availability and ubiquity”, says Shikiar. Therefore, they are the only currently available means to fully replace passwords, he says.

“Passkeys are built on open standards created within the FIDO Alliance and based on tried and tested cryptographic protocols,” says Shikiar. In addition, the technology is supported by all big tech and is device and operating system-agnostic, he says.

Passkeys are “far and away the best password alternative for online authentication”, agrees Stockley. “They are secure, easy to use and the cost of implementation is likely to get lower as they become more widely supported.”

But it’s important to realize that as we approach the end of passwords, replacements will have to compete with passwords which are themselves universally understood and very cheap to implement. “That's really hard,” says Stockley. “They're an authentication standard that dates from an era when managing low computing resources was the priority. Users understand them, support teams know how to support them and developers know how to implement them.”

Taking this into account, while some organizations may eventually go passwordless altogether, for now, many are supplementing passwords with MFA, says Steven Furnell, IEEE senior member and professor of cyber security at the University of Nottingham.

In the future, he predicts a mixed authentication setup will be the main choice for many businesses. “Some systems and services could use traditional passwords, some MFA, and some passwordless.”

Shikiar says there is “no need for any company to hang onto passwords”, but he does concede they will need to be “phased out over time”.  Initially, companies may keep them to help with account recovery until other possession-based factors are established, says Shikiar. If you do decide to make further moves away from passwords, the transition will depend on the organization, says Shikiar. “Many will have disparate legacy systems to grapple with, while for others it is more straightforward.”

When taking the plunge, Shikiar recommends a prioritization exercise. “Discover those systems that can migrate most easily and are most urgently in need of higher security.”

Transitioning from a password-centric security model requires a systematic approach, says Parkin. Organizations should begin with a comprehensive assessment for risk management, followed by pilot implementations in less critical areas, he says. “The integration of multi-factor authentication as an interim step can pave the way for a more seamless transition.”

Businesses can also take a “privileged user” approach by identifying employees with access to sensitive applications, and examining who is the most vulnerable to attacks, says Shikiar. “Migrate these users to phishing-resistant authentication as soon as possible and from there, you can start to work your way across the wider employee base.” 

Panelists at a recent policy forum said passkeys with detection-enabled biometrics make for a more secure online future, but accessibility and digital equity concerns must be addressed.

With data breaches that compromise personal info soaring — 2023 was a record year in the U.S., one report found — new methods of verifying identities are almost certainly on their way.

Passwords protect some of our most personal information from prying eyes, but despite their critical role, millions are still relying on lacklustre combinations to keep their data safe. And when we say "lacklustre", we really mean it.

A list of the most common passwords of 2023 has been published and shockingly "123456" is in first place. The uncreative password was used over 4.5 million times by users online, researchers say, with the word "admin" a close second with 4 million uses worldwide.

​Cybersecurity researchers worked with the team at NordPass – the password management software developed by the same minds as NordVPN – to put together the definitive list of the most common passwords of the year.

​To do this, they scoured a database of 4.3TB (that's a whopping 4,300,000MB) extracted from a number of high-profile password leaks on the Dark Web to find the passwords that people relied on more than any others. NordPass only received statistical information from the researchers, there was no personal data included in the findings sent to the password management team.

Hackers can break into accounts secured by passwords like "123456" and "admin" in under a second, researchers at NordPass confirmed. If you have any online accounts protected with one of these passwords, then it's time to change to something new – and much more secure.

Some websites have strict conditions for passwords, forcing account holders to use at least one letter, number, and special characters. These conditions have pushed passwords like "P@ssw0rd" into the top 30 passwords worldwide, but unfortunately, it's done little to make users' data safer. According to NordPass, "P@ssw0rd" can be unlocked by hackers in under one second. 

A troubling 70% of the list of most commonly used passwords can be hacked in seconds, researchers say.

Tomas Smalakys, NordPass Chief Technology Officer said: "With the terrifying risks password users encounter, alternative methods in online authentication are now essential.

"Passkey technology, considered the most promising innovation to replace passwords, is successfully paving its way, gaining trust among individuals and progressive companies worldwide. Being among the first password managers to offer this technology, we see people are curious to test new things, as long as this helps eliminate the hassle of passwords."

So, what should you do? NordPass recommends creating a strong password with at least 20 characters and a mixture of upper- and lower-case characters, numbers, and special characters. Personal information that could be easily guessed by those who know you – like birthdays, pet names, and hometowns – should be avoided. Always create a unique password for every online account, NordPass says.

If you're struggling to think of something, using the first letter from each word in a line of poetry, a saying, or a song lyric that you're unlikely to forget can be a great way to quickly generate what appears to be a completely random jumble of characters. 

Password managers are also a popular way of securing your online account. These applications generate secure passwords for every account, with these stored in an encrypted safe that can be accessed from any of your devices. To login, most of these applications only require a quick biometric check – facial recognition on the iPhone or a fingerprint scan on Windows PCs and Android.

NordPass is one option available alongside the likes of LastPass and 1Password.

Google and Apple both offer built-in password managers with their most popular products, dubbed Google Password Manager and iCloud Keychain respectively, that generate and store passwords.

Online accounts are increasingly turning to passkeys as a way to let users sign-in to apps and sites the same way they unlock their devices – using a fingerprint, a face, or an on-screen PIN. Unlike passwords, passkeys are resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure than one-time codes sent via SMS. Microsoft, Google, Apple and the FIDO Alliance are working together to bring passkeys to the web as an industry standard.

Although there are high hopes for passkeys, with Google even calling its rollout "the beginning of the end of the password", they're unlikely to eliminate old-fashioned passwords for some time. For the time being, we're still stuck with passwords for a huge number of our online accounts ...as such, it's time to ditch "password123" and think of something a little stronger. 

Top 10 Most Common Passwords

1. 123456 (used 4,524,867 times)
2. admin (used 4,008,850 times)
3. 12345678 (used 1,371,152 times)
4. 123456789 (used 1,213,047 times)
5. 1234 (used 969,811 times)
6. 12345 (used 728,414 times)
7. password (used 710,321 times)
8. 123 (used 528,086 times)
9. Aa123456 (used 319,725 times)
10. 1234567890 (used 302,709 times)

 Original Article​

LESS THAN SIX months ago, Google announced that it was launching support for the password replacement known as “passkeys” for all personal accounts across its billions of users. Today, the company said it is going a step further and will make passkeys the default login setting for users.

When you log in to your Google account, you’ll get a prompt to create a passkey and start using it for login instead of relying on your Gmail address and password. Google will be turning on the “skip password when possible” option in account settings, which is essentially the passkey green light. Users who don't want to kill their password just yet will still be able to turn that setting off so they don't receive the prompts.

Password-based authentication is so ubiquitous in digital systems that it isn't easy to replace. But passwords have inherent security problems because they can be guessed and stolen. And since it's so difficult to keep track of dozens or hundreds of passwords, users often reuse the same passwords on multiple accounts, making it easier for attackers to unlock all of those accounts in one fell swoop. Passkeys are specifically designed to address these issues and dramatically reduce the risk of phishing attacks by instead relying on a scheme that manages cryptographic keys stored on your devices for account authentication.

Google didn't share statistics on passkey adoption so far, saying instead in a blog post that “people have used passkeys on their favorite apps like YouTube, Search and Maps, and we’re encouraged by the results.” The company points out that passkey support is expanding across other apps and services. Apple and Microsoft both support passkeys. And companies like Uber and eBay recently launched passkeys, and they're coming to WhatsApp soon.

“Passwordless is something we set out to achieve 10-plus years ago, and we’re thrilled to not only see us already on the next step of the journey with passkeys by offering them by default, but also to see the great feedback from users who have made the switch,” Christiaan Brand, identity and security group product manager at Google, tells WIRED.

There's so much inertia on passwords around the world that even a player as big and influential as Google can't force the issue overnight. But the company is clearly using its influence to steer users with gentle pressure that seems likely to continue mounting as passkeys gain broader momentum.

“We’ll keep you updated on where else you can start using passkeys across other online accounts,” the company wrote today. “In the meantime, we’ll continue encouraging the industry to make the pivot to passkeys—making passwords a rarity, and eventually obsolete.” 

Original Article

FIDO APAC Summit 2023

August 28 – August 30

Silver Sponsor : TrustKey Solutions

The Asia-Pacific region is experiencing a significant shift in the landscape of authentication methods, with a growing interest in passwordless solutions. Traditional password-based authentication methods have proven to be vulnerable to various threats, including phishing attacks, credential theft, and weak password practices. As a result, organizations in Asia Pacific are actively exploring and adopting passwordless authentication as a more secure and user-friendly alternative. The Asia Pacific identity and authentication market is expected to grow during the forecast period from 2021 to 2028.

The FIDO APAC Summit 2023 brought together industry leaders, cybersecurity experts, and government representatives from Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore, Australia, and South Korea to explore the latest developments and success stories in FIDO authentication.

In particular, Google seemed to be focusing on spreading Passkey by supporting it on Chrome and Android.

At this summit, TrustKey operated an exhibition booth to introduce the new model B210 and showcase TrustKey Login Solution and PIV.  In addition, we met with leading companies such as DTASIA Vietnam, VinCSS, and CySack to discuss potential partnerships, especially with VinCSS.

Through this event, we had the opportunity to introduce TrustKey solutions' FIDO technology and had a rich networking experience.