With iCloud Passkey, Apple is going to make passwords obsolete. Finally.
How to Use Apple's FREE Password Manager on iPhone, iPad, and Mac!
Passwords are a huge problem. Weak or stolen passwords are the cause of over 80% of hacking breaches, and people are just plain bad at managing passwords. We forget them, use our dog’s or kids’ names, or use the same password for everything. Password managers like NordPass or iCloud Keychain can help, but a password is still fundamentally insecure. Passkeys in iCloud Keychain and the new WebAuthn standard aim to solve this, but can they ever really replace the password?
“If Apple rolls this out by default on its devices, millions of people will get used to it and other tech giants like Google will follow suit,” Gadget Review CEO Christen Costa told Lifewire via email.
The problem with a password is that it needs to be kept secret, but it also needs to be shared. iCloud Passkeys use something called Public Key Cryptography, which consists of two keys. The public key can only lock things, so it’s safe to share; the private key can both lock and unlock data, and it never leaves your device.
