Security News > 2022 > March > FIDO Alliance says it has finally killed the password

The FIDO Alliance has been trying to eliminate passwords since its inception in 2012.

FIDO has a long history of authentication innovation, being responsible for the USB hardware keys that were everywhere for a while, as well as being part of the team that published the WebAuthn security specification.

Security implementations with extra bits break what FIDO said is a key rule in the world of consumer products: "It has to 'just work' without requiring additional devices or inconveniences," the paper said.

FIDO's new solution to the password problem has been staring us in the face, or rather we've been staring at it, for years: our smartphones.

"A smartphone is something that end-users typically already have. Virtually all consumer-space two-factor authentication mechanisms today already make use of the user's smartphone," FIDO said.

FIDO cites Apple's adoption of "Passkeys," which use iOS biometrics and iCloud Keychain public keys to verify identities, as one example of its proposal in action.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/03/21/fido_password_killer/