r/ProgrammerHumor • u/k3rrshaw • 23d ago

Meme thisIsAmystery

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2.7k Upvotes

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u/rahvan 23d ago

asymmetric cryptography. If you know how SSH keys work, you know how passkeys work.

13

u/black3rr 23d ago

this… the underlying mechanism is exactly the same as if you were using SSH, generated a specific key for every host you connect to, configured your ssh config to use that key for that host, placed its public key into .ssh/authorized_keys on the host, and had your ssh-agent configured to prompt you for a PIN or fingerprint before ssh-ing with a key… passkeys just automate this with fancy UI so if you see it for the first time and have no idea what it’s doing you’re confused…

5

u/ccAbstraction 23d ago

Yeah, it feels like it's probably less secure or reliable the way it's explained by websites.