Thursday, May 5th 2022
Apple, Google and Microsoft commit to expanded support for FIDO standard to accelerate availability of passwordless sign-ins
In a joint effort to make the web more secure and usable for all, Apple, Google and Microsoft today announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. The new capability will allow websites and apps to offer consistent, secure, and easy passwordless sign-ins to consumers across devices and platforms. Password-only authentication is one of the biggest security problems on the web, and managing so many passwords is cumbersome for consumers, which often leads consumers to reuse the same ones across services. This practice can lead to costly account takeovers, data breaches, and even stolen identities. While password managers and legacy forms of two-factor authentication offer incremental improvements, there has been industry-wide collaboration to create sign-in technology that is more convenient and more secure.
The expanded standards-based capabilities will give websites and apps the ability to offer an end-to-end passwordless option. Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN. This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS.
An Expansion of Passwordless Standard Support
Hundreds of technology companies and service providers from around the world worked within the FIDO Alliance and W3C to create the passwordless sign-in standards that are already supported in billions of devices and all modern web browsers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have led development of this expanded set of capabilities and are now building support into their respective platforms.
These companies' platforms already support FIDO Alliance standards to enable passwordless sign-in on billions of industry-leading devices, but previous implementations require users to sign in to each website or app with each device before they can use passwordless functionality. Today's announcement extends these platform implementations to give users two new capabilities for more seamless and secure passwordless sign-ins:
These new capabilities are expected to become available across Apple, Google, and Microsoft platforms over the course of the coming year.
"'Simpler, stronger authentication' is not just FIDO Alliance's tagline—it also has been a guiding principle for our specifications and deployment guidelines. Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale, and we applaud Apple, Google, and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products," said Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. "This new capability stands to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations alongside the ongoing and growing utilization of security keys—giving service providers a full range of options for deploying modern, phishing-resistant authentication."
"The standards developed by the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium and being led in practice by these innovative companies is the type of forward-leaning thinking that will ultimately keep the American people safer online. I applaud the commitment of our private sector partners to open standards that add flexibility for the service providers and a better user experience for customers," said Jen Easterly, Director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. "At CISA, we are working to raise the cybersecurity baseline for all Americans. Today is an important milestone in the security journey to encourage built-in security best practices and help us move beyond passwords. Cyber is a team sport, and we're pleased to continue our collaboration."
"Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure," said Kurt Knight, Apple's Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing. "Working with the industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience—all with the goal of keeping users' personal information safe."
"This milestone is a testament to the collaborative work being done across the industry to increase protection and eliminate outdated password-based authentication," said Mark Risher, Senior Director of Product Management, Google. "For Google, it represents nearly a decade of work we've done alongside FIDO, as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future. We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome, ChromeOS, Android and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords."
"The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives. Any viable solution must be safer, easier, and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today," says Alex Simons, Corporate Vice President, Identity Program Management at Microsoft. "By working together as a community across platforms, we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords. We see a bright future for FIDO-based credentials in both consumer and enterprise scenarios and will continue to build support across Microsoft apps and services."
Source:
FIDO Alliance
The expanded standards-based capabilities will give websites and apps the ability to offer an end-to-end passwordless option. Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN. This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS.
Hundreds of technology companies and service providers from around the world worked within the FIDO Alliance and W3C to create the passwordless sign-in standards that are already supported in billions of devices and all modern web browsers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have led development of this expanded set of capabilities and are now building support into their respective platforms.
These companies' platforms already support FIDO Alliance standards to enable passwordless sign-in on billions of industry-leading devices, but previous implementations require users to sign in to each website or app with each device before they can use passwordless functionality. Today's announcement extends these platform implementations to give users two new capabilities for more seamless and secure passwordless sign-ins:
- Allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials (referred to by some as a "passkey") on many of their devices, even new ones, without having to re-enroll every account.
- Enable users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website on a nearby device, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running.
These new capabilities are expected to become available across Apple, Google, and Microsoft platforms over the course of the coming year.
"'Simpler, stronger authentication' is not just FIDO Alliance's tagline—it also has been a guiding principle for our specifications and deployment guidelines. Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale, and we applaud Apple, Google, and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products," said Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. "This new capability stands to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations alongside the ongoing and growing utilization of security keys—giving service providers a full range of options for deploying modern, phishing-resistant authentication."
"The standards developed by the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium and being led in practice by these innovative companies is the type of forward-leaning thinking that will ultimately keep the American people safer online. I applaud the commitment of our private sector partners to open standards that add flexibility for the service providers and a better user experience for customers," said Jen Easterly, Director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. "At CISA, we are working to raise the cybersecurity baseline for all Americans. Today is an important milestone in the security journey to encourage built-in security best practices and help us move beyond passwords. Cyber is a team sport, and we're pleased to continue our collaboration."
"Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure," said Kurt Knight, Apple's Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing. "Working with the industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience—all with the goal of keeping users' personal information safe."
"This milestone is a testament to the collaborative work being done across the industry to increase protection and eliminate outdated password-based authentication," said Mark Risher, Senior Director of Product Management, Google. "For Google, it represents nearly a decade of work we've done alongside FIDO, as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future. We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome, ChromeOS, Android and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords."
"The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives. Any viable solution must be safer, easier, and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today," says Alex Simons, Corporate Vice President, Identity Program Management at Microsoft. "By working together as a community across platforms, we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords. We see a bright future for FIDO-based credentials in both consumer and enterprise scenarios and will continue to build support across Microsoft apps and services."
35 Comments on Apple, Google and Microsoft commit to expanded support for FIDO standard to accelerate availability of passwordless sign-ins
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... now why didnt that happen by like, 1998 again?
sigh
broken phone, phone too old for the required app....
this seems like a trade off, a password has disadvantages but also a lot of advantages due to it just being data and not a physical device that is needed.
I do not mind if this get introduced as long as there is a CHOICE to contuine using passwords. Without a choice this at least would need to allow a number of physcial devices. (for example backup phones).
Whereas a properly structured & engineered username/password system that uses proper encryption and salting is perfectly secure.
We do NOT need a new system, we need to improve and properly implement existing methodologies. Also......this. What happens if you loose your authentication device? You're screwed.
Fu^& biometrics and Fu^& FIDO.
this is (worse than) useless. let me use my own fucking private key, i know how to set one up. (and secure it too.)
Just imagine in 30 years from now (nearly PS1 till today) what short of privacy intrusions will be deemed acceptable by then and the world we will be living in...
Finger print scanners I've never gotten it to work worth beans
My fingers are always changing from calluses and cuts
So yeah a couple paper cuts lock you out
Face recognition
Nope DMV is as far as that goes appearances also change beard/ no beard just woke up verses sweating like a dog :laugh:
I frankly don't do a lot on cell phones.
Password free world ms has been harping about this for years it's just foraging nonsense
The answer that we the people must express to these coperate nitwits is a resounding "NO THANK YOU!" or perhaps "CRAM THIS GARBAGE WHERE THE SUN DOESN'T SHINE!".
Proper implementation of username/password is the correct answer.
The key is don't give a credit or debit card number to any of these companies so if some does hack their email servers "which your picture id/..... would be stolen too" hackers would only be sending spam to your contacts.
The strongest form of security I have used that doesnt require dedicated hardware is IP based ACL's which is whats used e.g. on the Xbox Development platform. Some datacentres and domain providers also use this technology, and I manually configure it on many of my servers.
The problem with ACL though is for it to work conveniently user's need a static internet IP. Whilst the majority of people are on dynamic IP or even worse CGNAT. IPv6 should solve this problem, but privacy standards been pushed which compromise security (temporary random ipv6 allocation in the OS) compromise this idea alongside many broadband providers dragging their feet on ipv6 adoption.
Some companies nevertheless have adopted soft automated IP ACL's, so e.g. if they detect your IP has changed then have to reauthenticate on 2FA, if IP stays same, the 2FA is skipped.
Then there is the question of entities storing data insecurely, which is how these data leaks are happening in the first place. So imagine losing password, but then imagine losing your fingerprint because the entity got hacked. You can use unique password for every service, but not a unique fingerprint.
Requiring users to create longer & more secure passwords that are then salted and encrypted clientside before transmission is the correct solution.
Properly crafted longer passphrase passwords are easy to remember, are impossible to guess and extremely difficult to brute force.
Example(please note, this is not my personal password, if you try using it to access my account W1zzard will likely ban your IP, only warning):
Long.Pass=Phra53s-Canb3fUn
The above passphrase password example is easy to memorize, easy to type out and is unbreakable. This 26 character passphrase meets all of the requirements for proper password security. It is greater than 24 characters, is made up of upper and lower case letters, contains several numbers and special characters making brute-force prohibitively tedious and a dictionary(technical or traditional) type attack would fail as it is acceptably complex. Coupled with the above mentioned proper salting & encryption and passwords like this are unbreakable in the wild. Mixed language passphrase passwords are even more secure.
Example:
Long.Pass=Phra53s-Canb3fUn,paTok
In this case, the same password is mixed with a misspelled insult from a fictional language. Still easy to memorize but impossible to guess or brute-force. With properly implemented 128bit encryption, the fastest computer array currently on Earth would need approximately 1.2billion years to crack it by brute-force methods. Using 160bit encryption that time increases to 43billion years. Even the slowest phone on Earth can handle 160bit encryption without much effort.
These large corporations are overlooking the obvious and need to leave security concerns to security experts instead of nitwits trying to climb the ladder.Sorry man, IPV6 is ridiculously insecure. "House of Cards" kind of insecure.Absolutely nothing and it happens all the time.