The giants of Silicon Valley would like us to adopt passkeys, these physical keys which, very soon, will allow us to say goodbye to passwords. Our online habits are likely to change faster than we think. Google, Microsoft and Apple want to impose passkeys before the end of the year.
Passwords will disappear and will be replaced by passkeys, a safer and more convenient identification technology. If Android, iOS and the most popular browser in the world, Google Chrome, are already compatible, the general public has not yet really adopted this new technology. Small return on the passkeys.
Passwords are an integral part of our daily life on the Internet. However, this identification technique has too many weaknesses. The first is that Internet users must memorize many passwords. In the best case, they use a password manager. That said, even this software isn’t foolproof, as evidenced by the data leak that hit LastPass in August and December 2022.
Passkeys double the security and eliminate the need for passwords
The main problem is that people often use the same passwords, much to the delight of hackers. Microsoft believes that worldwide, 921 password attacks are carried out every second. Once in possession of these credentials, hackers can conduct phishing campaigns, steal funds, or even worse, steal your identity.
With passkeys, this type of attack is much more complicated to set up. In the future, to access one of your accounts, you will need to have the connection with an external device approved, the passkey. A message will be sent to a secondary device, for example your smartphone. You will confirm the connection with a PIN code or your biometric data. A hacker, to be able to steal your identifiers, must not only have the public key corresponding to your account from the application, but also your private key, accessible only from your physical key, the passkey.
Source: CNBC