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by FireInsight 10 days ago
Okay, I'm a tech nerd I admit it, but for my personal authentication life I find passkeys to make sense.

All my passwords and SSH key are already in Bitwarden. When a site starts supporting passkeys, I add that to Bitwarden as well. Now, instead of logging in by auto-filling my username and password, I just press the passkey login button (that hopefully exists) and click on the Bitwarden popup to select the account. It's less button presses for me, and I cannot be phished, nor can my passkeys be leaked on the dark web. All thanks to some fancy cryptography.

Okay, sure, if someone steals my Bitwarden vault by snatching my laptop while it's unlocked or something, I end up pretty screwed. That security aspect did not change, so I still use TOTP for all important services.

Also, I've made one invite-only web app where single-use invite codes and passkeys are the only ways to log in. It was not too hard, it was fun, actually. And I get the peace of mind that account sharing is pretty much impossible were a bad actor able to get their hands on an invite, as is hacking other people's accounts.

(Okay, I concede that I've had to help multiple people who find passkeys confusing as a result of this whimsical decision, and that it just might be that nobody is using my web app for real. So I'm just speaking from nerd privilege here... But it works well, trust me!!)

2 comments

> Also, I've made one invite-only web app where single-use invite codes and passkeys are the only ways to log in. It was not too hard, it was fun, actually. And I get the peace of mind that account sharing is pretty much impossible were a bad actor able to get their hands on an invite, as is hacking other people's accounts.

It also makes access to the app maximally unrecoverable if someone loses access to the passkey...

The userbase is so tiny they can just ask me or another admin for another invite code. No data is tied to the account that would be lost in the process.
So what do you use for TOTP? Also bitwarden?
Ente Auth. Obviously not Bitwarden, I don't even know why that's an option. Having your 1st and 2nd factors in the same place seems foolish. I used to use Aegis, which might technically be a bit more secure, but Ente is also on the PrivacyGuides recommendations list (https://www.privacyguides.org/en/multi-factor-authentication...), so I opted to use it for more peace of mind in case my phone breaks.