[upstream] wishlist: Passkeys should be supported

[Martijn H]

Starting from 2022 the main big tech companies introduce Passkeys.
Or in the more official name Fido Multi-device credentials.
Basically this is a webauthn login, but the private key is distributed among all the devices in a persons Google, Microsoft and iCloud account.

If a person wants to login in on a device not in the account a QR code should be scanned after which the computers do some cryptographic magic via Bluetooth. And the new device also has the private key.

This method is supposed to be a lot safer and more convenient than the usual passwords.

As far as I know this system is open.

My wish is that Ubuntu and Linux in general also will support this Passkeys thing.

Regards, Martijn.
See :
https://fidoalliance.org/multi-device-fido-credentials/
https://developers.google.com/identity/fido
https://developer.apple.com/passkeys/

[Dirkjan Ochtman (dirkjan-ochtman)]

I suppose this might be part of WebAuthentication level 3? While I'm aware that passkeys is the Apple marketing name, I was unable to find an existing issue in the tracker referring to this feature.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sphink (sphink)]

Google appears to be using the passkey terminology as well: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2022/10/bringing-passkeys-to-android-and-chrome.html

[R-mozilla (r-mozilla)]

There is some useful info and further links at https://fidoalliance.org/passkeys/

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

This is being tracked in this upstream bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1792433.

[Jokeyrhyme-4 (jokeyrhyme-4)]

There's a passkeys test application here for convenience: https://www.passkeys.io/

[Clemence-e (clemence-e)]

This would really improve my security on the internet. I hope it'll be delivered soon.

[Ignisvulpis-t (ignisvulpis-t)]

Synchronization from one Firefox to another on a different platform through Firefox Accounts?
Create a passkey on Firefox Android and use it with Firefox on Windows?

[Jonathan-browne (jonathan-browne)]

For macOS specifically, Apple has a restricted entitlement that grants full access to the system AuthenticationServices framework, which includes both physical security keys and passkeys via iCloud Keychain. There's some information and a link to apply for the entitlement at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com_apple_developer_web-browser_public-key-credential.

[Mildred-bug-mozilla (mildred-bug-mozilla)]

It seems Firefox implemented passkeys for Windows and MacOS but lack support for Linux as shown in https://www.passkeys.io/compatible-devices

I don't quite understand what is so platform specific. Of course, integration in the native platform password manager is nice but not mandatory. Firefox already stores its passwords and can sync them with Firefox Sync. What's so different with passkeys and what's the status of this feature?

As a web developer if I can provide passkeys as the primary login method, this would be a great step forward, but it'd be better to have full browser compatibility.