Skip to content

Your Passkey is Weak: Phishing the Unphishable

Chad Spensky

Demonstrates an effective phishing attack vector against synced passkeys and outlines operational safeguards for enterprise passkey deployments.

Summary

The Promise and Reality of Passkeys

FIDO2 passkeys are widely promoted as the definitive solution to phishing, leveraging public-key cryptography and origin-bound credentials to prevent credential harvesting attacks.

Phishing Vectors Against Synced Passkeys

Chad Spensky demonstrates a practical attack chain targeting consumer-synced passkey ecosystems. By manipulating device enrollment flows and user trust assumptions, attackers can induce users into delegating access or pairing unauthorized synchronization devices.

Social Engineering and Device Pairing Exploits

Attacking the passkey ecosystem shifts the adversary focus from password harvesting to credential syncing mechanisms, QR-code authentication flows, and account recovery handoffs.

Recommendations for Secure Passkey Implementation

Enterprises adopting passkeys must configure strict device attestation policies, mandate hardware security keys for high-privilege roles, and educate users on verifying cross-device pairing prompts.

Related talks