Hacker News Reader

Comment by mxey | Hacker News Reader

Apple‘s password manager is available for Windows, although I don’t know if it supports passkeys.

Also, there are mechanisms to use a passkey from another device (over Bluetooth I think?)

Yes, its called "hybrid transport", and its a flow where a laptop presents a QR code to a mobile phone, who then sets up a BLE connection for one time use of the passkey.

https://www.corbado.com/blog/webauthn-passkey-qr-code

(Not sure how the "cloud assisted" part of caBLE works)

So... you need to carry two electronic devices for this so-called security solution?

No… you can also sync with iCloud Passwords, or use a hardware token, like a Yubikey.

So a Yubikey is not an electronic device that you need to carry?

iCloud Passwords don't run on an iPhone that is an electronic device that you need to carry?

Those electronic devices that you mention don't each store the keys in a proprietary format and you can't access them without the vendor's cooperation - i.e. vendor lock in?

>Those electronic devices that you mention don't each store the keys in a proprietary format and you can't access them without the vendor's cooperation - i.e. vendor lock in?

Passkey portability is being worked on. Here is the draft of the open standard:

https://github.com/fido-alliance/credential-exchange-feedbac...

News article: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/15/24270875/password-manage...

BLE seems to be a different way to authenticate than QR codes. Desktop computers may often not have Bluetooth chips.

iCloud Passwords is not built-in to Windows, so users have to know to install it. Most don't. Most iPhone users don't know they're using iCloud Passwords. In fact, many aren't (because it is oftentimes toggled off in settings because their grandson told them to do it or some other b.s. like that).

And, also, it barely works, if the wind is blowing in the right direction; was clearly built by a long forgotten team to check a box.

They've also released a Chrome extension, but no Firefox extension (actually, they did release a Firefox extension, but it only works on MacOS). Again, you have to know to install this.

The Windows Hello bluetooth system for passkeys has never worked for anyone I've seen try to use it. The display & scanning of the QR code works better. But, that only works if the passkey was generated on iOS and is being used on Windows; if the passkey was generated on Windows and needs to be used on iOS, you're probably screwed (I've never seen Windows try to pop open its webcam, if the device even has a webcam, to scan a QR code on another device.)

Apple has a password manager? What is it called? I’m a typical iPhone/Windows user and have never heard of it.

Apple has had a password manager baked into iOS for 11 years now. It was initially called iCloud Keychain and buried in the system settings, now it's been broken out into the "Passwwords" app as of iOS 18. There are extensions for Chrome to use the app on Windows PCs as well.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/120758

Keychain goes back to 1997. The initial selling point for 1Password was that you got the Mac experience across platforms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com