Re:How computer scientists got password policies so wrong
by snarbles on Friday November 15, 2024 @10:22AM
(#42147695)
The conclusion of the article seems to be that passwords should be encrypted with asymmetric encryption instead of being hashed. I really couldn't disagree more. We see how competently companies manage their security. It's very easy to imagine a scenario like a company using the same key to encrypt every password. They accidentally push it to github or otherwise get it compromised and now a dumped database becomes a table of plaintext passwords, no rainbow tables needed.
What we really got wrong about passwords is using them in the first place. I don't know know anything about how passkeys are implemented. I would hope they aren't tied into any OAuth nonsense (IMO OAuth is a cure worse than the disease), but even if the implementation were flawed, passkeys are the right kind of solution: cryptographic authentication that plays to the computer's strength instead of depending on something humans aren't good at.
What we really got wrong about passwords is using them in the first place. I don't know know anything about how passkeys are implemented. I would hope they aren't tied into any OAuth nonsense (IMO OAuth is a cure worse than the disease), but even if the implementation were flawed, passkeys are the right kind of solution: cryptographic authentication that plays to the computer's strength instead of depending on something humans aren't good at.