Bitwarden announced its acquisition of the start-up Passwordless.dev, which specializes in creating APIs to help developers integrate authentication solutions without passwords.
With this purchase, and like some of its competitors, the password manager is trying to find a place for itself in a future that hopes to see the famous sesame disappear in the long term.
The password, this weakness to eliminate
Efforts continue to accelerate to achieve a future without passwords. These remain a major source of security problems. Indeed, they are generally not complex enough and can be easily guessed, without forgetting that phishing attacks regularly aim to recover them to gain access to accounts and sensitive information. The FIDO Alliance was launched precisely to reflect on these issues. It seeks to reduce our dependence on sesame, to think about other authentication solutions and to make these solutions compatible between devices and platforms. She has since been joined by many important companies to help her in her mission.
Ironically, password managers are no slouch in this fight. Several of them, like LastPass and 1Password, are members of the Alliance. 1Password also recently announced support for access keys on its manager to allow its users to easily log in without passwords on all compatible websites, from all their devices. While Bitwarden already offered passwordless authentication methods to access its services, the company is taking it a step further with the acquisition of Passwordless.dev.
Bitwarden invests in easier passwordless integration
Passwordless.dev is a start-up founded in 2020 with a simple mission: to enable developers to easily add passwordless authentication features to their web applications. According to her, its API allows developers to integrate the functionality of WebAuthn, a W3C standard for passwordless logins, in minutes instead of weeks. Thus, the start-up seeks to encourage the adoption of this new standard both within new web applications and those that already exist by making it much easier to access and simple to integrate.
Bitwarden has therefore announced that it has acquired the company, for an amount which has not been made public. This decision may come as a surprise from a password manager who has built their entire business model on the existence of passwords and the need to manage them as they become more complex. The company justifies it by stating that its mission has always been to ensure the safety of all and that ” passwordless is part of this mission “.
To celebrate this acquisition, the company launched the Bitwarden Passwordless.dev beta. It allows developers and companies to test the solution for free and to be able to provide feedback. The beta will be available throughout the first quarter of 2023, and during the second quarter, Bitwarden will unveil its paid subscriptions as well as its free third party for Passwordless.dev. The company still wants to reassure current users: Passwordless.dev offers will be completely independent of other Bitwarden offers.
Sources: TechCrunch, Bitwarden
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