#18 - An Internet without passwords, closer thanks to WebAuthn

What would the Internet be without the services that populate it? Stores, communities, applications ... That and much more is what Internet offers today, and as a consequence the logic is the use of passwords, the standard authentication method since always. However, the management of passwords is a tricky business, both because of the exposure and wear that has been seen in the system itself, and because of the bad practices that most users can do.

But technology has advanced a world in recent decades and the keyboard and mouse are no longer the only peripherals with which the user can interact with the software. Without going any further, progress in the mobile sector has shown that identification can be more accessible. We are talking about facial recognition or fingerprinting, two of the methods that the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have considered in the new Web Authentication (WebAuthn) standard, developed in collaboration with the main web browsers on the market, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Opera.

WebAuthn defines an open API that can directly integrate web pages and browsers, with the aim of updating once and for all authentication on any website implementing measures such as those mentioned, or other more specialized, such as specific devices, read USB, mobile or wearables, always with an external identifier that serves as a means of verification.

"With the new FIDO2 specifications and the support of the leading web browsers that we announced today, we are taking a big step forward to make FIDO authentication ubiquitous on all platforms and devices."

Although there are many security problems and we can not solve them all, trusting passwords is one of the weakest links. WebAuthn will change the way people access the web.

Are you already used to double authentication with your mobile phone, for example when you log in to your Google or Microsoft account? The main application - the most widespread one - of WebAuthn can go in a very similar line, but doing away with the first step related to entering the password. Possibly we begin to see it this year, although until it is extended and it is still present.

The computer age is a lamp of infinite changes.