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@nikitonsky Let me ramble about information security theory for a moment.

To authorize a user, you either check they **have** something (key, card, file, private key, etc) or they **know** something (password, pin, passphrase, etc). If you check both it's 2FA, and that's why storing TOTPs in a password manager is the dumbest thing one can do.

Passkeys provide a good and reliable way to "have" something. Unlike files (e.g, ssh keys) they can't be stolen remotely. Unlike key cards they can't be cloned with a simple reader. It's really hard to create a copy of it, that's why they're good.

But they are definitely not like passwords :)

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Niki Tonsky

@bemyak what do you mean “hard to make copy”? It’s just data, why is it hard?

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@nikitonsky I assumed by passkeys you meant something like Yubikey or Nitrokey. Once a key is written there, it can't be extracted by "normal" means. If you want a backup, you buy two devices and write your keys to both of them¹

[1] support.yubico.com/hc/en-us/ar

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@nikitonsky Nitrokey and Yubikey can act as passkeys for FIDO2. I use my Flipper Zero for WebAuth, and there the keys are encrypted with device-specific keys, so merely copying them onto another device will now work¹. I'm not sure about other implementations, but I assume they act similarly?

[1] docs.flipper.net/u2f

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