[dvfjsdhgfv]

I'd appreciate a good argument apart from downvoting. In every discussion I had about it with fellow sysaddmins we agreed the convenience of passwordless logins can't be considered a security feature in spite of what someone wrote and what others repeat.

[crypt1d]

No glove fits everyone. There are many answers to the problem and each depends on the set of circumstances in which your service exists. Security is, simply put, risk management. To put things into a context: the 'average Joe' user is rarely going to be targeted specifically - which means that the biggest attack vector of the average user is brute forcing by bots and phishing attempts or maybe a key/password stealing malware. Hence your argument that 'key-based auth' just shifts the attack vector is partially incorrect because automated attacks do not focus on a specific target but on a specific vulnerability - like password guessing bots for example which move from IP to IP and try a bunch of simple password. If these passwords don't work, the bots will not try to hack a dev's workstation, they'll just find an easier target.

So for the average user it makes sense to move to key based auth because it will remove a big attack vector. It is still possible that the workstation where the private key resides becomes compromised, but thats another attack vector that needs to be addressed by different security methods (eg, passphrase on the private key).