alt Hacker NewsIt seems to me like those who like passkeys/consider them simple are those who entrust all their credentials to proprietary cloud software vendors that sync them to all their devices.
Those of us who are not comfortable with that and want to keep our credentials offline and sync/backup them ourselves have questions about how the registration/backup/sharing flows work exactly.
I see this as part of a trend together with remote attestation, age verification, CSAM scanning, restricting sideloading, etc that will lead to most interactions over the internet only being allowed if big tech and/or government can verify the participants, the contents, and the hardware and software used.
Even among techies, many support these developments, so it is just a matter of time before we have no choice but to join the former group.
I do love the cloud version of passkeys, but I also have a backup YubiKey. I could do two backup YubiKeys, drop the cloud, and keep one YubiKey in a safe deposit box and one elsewhere, but I haven't had much reason to yet.
A passkey doesn't give up anything compared to a password, and is in fact much much easier to handle, IMHO. I have kept all of my private SSH keys in secure hardware for a decade, so perhaps I'm more used to carrying a physical key than others, but IMHO it's all better, all around.
We should eliminate passwords, and that has nothing to do with remote attestation, age verification, or anything like that.
For 20 years, I've only known two to three passwords at any time, and those are login passwords for separate boxes or corporate/home accounts. Beyond that, hardware access should solve everything, and I shouldn't have to type any passwords anywhere. Every account needs granular credentials, not shared credentials, but no user should have to memorize passwords beyond one per work domain.