Hacker News Reader

Comment by pseudalopex | Hacker News Reader

Passkeys relying parties can block providers. Tim Cappalli threatened the KeypassXC developers so.[1] The restrictions demanded now do not restrict user freedom significantly arguably. But the incentives and capabilities are clear.

[1] https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#iss...

View on HN

OK but you'd still be able to use the open source "password manager" to export the keys - which solves the issue lapcat raised in this thread - even if relying parties blocked it for authentication, which would be a separate issue.

Someone could develop a "passkey export tool" purely for the purpose of doing credential exchange then local export.

Or are you saying the credential exchange process itself could block providers?

You misunderstood lapcat I think. They wanted Passkeys stored locally exclusively. And they wanted to be able to use them. The issues are not separate.

Hi, Tim Cappalli here.

Not sure how stating that my (an individual) opinions on a topic are evolving is interpreted as "threatened the KeypassXC developers".

If you've been following along, you'll have seen that I am actually one of the biggest advocates of the open passkey ecosystem, and have been working really hard to make sure all credential managers have a level playing field.

Always happy to chat directly if you have concerns!

The threat you relayed was more serious than the threat you made. But it is a threat when a person with influence suggests they may support a punishment.

The biggest advocates of an open ecosystem say attestation should be removed and no one should adopt Passkeys before. Is this your position now?

The concerns were clear I thought. I would be happy to discuss this publicly.

Attestation is not used in the consumer passkey ecosystem.

But it could be. Yes?

Not really. The attestation model defined for workforce (enterprise) credential managers/authenticators doesn't really work in practice for consumer credential managers.

> doesn't really work in practice

Avoid weasel words please. Is it possible in theory to use attestation or any other Passkeys feature ever to prevent a user to use any software they chose with any service they chose?

In theory any code could be written at any time that does something good or bad. Sure.

But in reality, the people who actually work on these standards within the FIDO alliance do not want a world where every website/service makes arbitrary decisions on which password managers are allowed. That would be a nightmare.

Will be a nightmare. If they really didn't want this they wouldn't have put the tool to do it right in the spec.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com