Will passkeys be available on /e/OS?

[Canard]

Hello,

I learnt that tech companies from the FIDO alliance will deploy passkeys in the following months. Passkeys are a new authentication method that aims to avoid passwords. It is more secure and also more user-friendly.

From this article, https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-chrome-passkeys-3219378/ it is mentioned to download “Google Play Services beta” to try it out now.

As it seems to involve Google Play, will it be possible to have passkeys on /e/OS, where we do not have Google Play?

I really hope so, as this may be the way to take out the hassle of password management and multi factor authentication while not losing in security.

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services

[anon88181694]

This is a feature of Google Play Services which /e/OS doesn’t include: Android Developers Blog: Bringing passkeys to Android & Chrome

It may technically be possible for microG to implement it, see for example their recent work on FIDO support.

[anon88181694]

@petefoth
It is not a proprietary standard. This is just a software implementation of WebAuthn tokens.

Making it available this way, (and likely backed by the hardware keystore) is an awesome way to bring more account security to the masses.

[petefoth]

Thanks for clarifying I wasn;t looking forward to a lot of detailed technical reading to find that out!

I’ll do something with my post

[tcecyk]

microg just came around implementing parts of fido / webauthn that is found within gplay. Following that work (there really is only one issue thread on it at the repo) might reach into the passkey functionality at some point, it’s still early times currently. A 3rd party sync mechanism cant be part of microg I guess, but the qr sharing. I’d ask marvin, the microg author, to evaluate the chances

[Canard]

Thanks @anon88181694 & @tcecyk for your answers. I now understand that the solution will have to come from microG to manage the keys. I really hope they will take passkeys into account.

I am not worried about the 3rd party sync as for example Bitwarden already committed support for passkeys Support for Apple Passkey (and Google and Microsoft) - Feature Requests - Bitwarden Community Forums so I am confident about having an open source sync solution for the keys, once the operating system / microG itself is able to manage them.

[mu88]

Since Passkeys are becoming more and more prevalent, I want to reinvigorate this topic: is there any news about this?

I know that microG needs to implement this first, but since /e/ foundation sponsors microG, I’m curious to know whether there is something going on behind the scenes.
And if not, how can it get more traction

[tcecyk]

you can follow https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/1961 - but microg runs no infra to pass around keys (haha, passkey), so for murena you’re looking for a nextcloud integrated plugin to distribute keys for connected devices.

I guess the authenticator/pwmanager companys will come up first with solutions outside the first time implementers Microsoft / Google.

Edit: bitwarden has now passkey support, keepassxc had it for almost a year. Firefox will likely introduce it for its own password manager.

[mu88]

I’ve contacted Bitwarden whether their Android app will have their own passkeys implementation (not based on Google Play Services), but the answer didn’t sound promising… so it would be awesome to see this feature in /e/OS / microG