A No-Frills Explainer On The Future Of Password-Less Authentication — Smashing Magazine

Passkeys are a new way of authenticating applications and websites. Instead of having to remember a password, a third-party service provider (e.g., Google or Apple) generates and stores a cryptographic key pair that is bound to a website domain. Since you have access to the service provider, you have access to the keys, which you can then use to log in.

This cryptographic key pair contains both private and public keys that are used for authenticating messages. These key pairs are often known as asymmetric or public key cryptography.

Public and private key pair? Asymmetric cryptography? Like most modern technology, passkeys are described by esoteric verbiage and acronyms that make them difficult to discuss. That’s the point of this article. I want to put the complex terms aside and help illustrate how passkeys work, explain what they are effective at, and demonstrate what it looks like to work with them.

How Passkeys Work

Passkeys are cryptographic keys that rely on generating signatures. A signature is proof that a message is authentic. How so? It happens first by hashing (a fancy term for “obscuring”) the message and...