Why “authenticator” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
The counter-argument he makes against people's concerns about attestation is laughable, all he says is that it hasn't happened yet. Passkeys are not designed just for security,…
by zaptheimpaler · Oct 14, 2026
Sites should support multiple passkeys, and allow you to select between them if more than one are available. I've seen this work on both Windows and iOS, where I have sites set…
by jasomill · Oct 14, 2026
Trying to fight it takes an enormous amount of time and energy. I carry two phones now - since I have my "privacy" enabled phone that basically has nothing on it. Email, message…
by burningChrome · Oct 14, 2026
Thank you for posting on this. The last post on passkeys was utterly confusing and I have been thinking about this until yesterday. I had done some research for a client and had…
by 1010m · Oct 14, 2026
The article describes a straightforward phishing attack that works specifically against accounts that are _not_ protected by passkeys: > Depending on which multi factor method t…
by aleksejs · Oct 14, 2026
> The obvious way to satisfy people is to remove support for remote attestation from the spec. If you presume bad faith on the part of basically the entire WebAuthn implementer…
by aleksejs · Oct 14, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "authenticator" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "authenticator" over time.
An authenticator is a means used to confirm a user's identity, that is, to perform digital authentication. A person authenticates to a computer system or application by demonstrating that he or she has possession and control of an authenticator. In the simplest case, the authenticator is a common password. Read more on Wikipedia