Passkeys - an explanation

I have been struggling with passkeys lately for a couple of reasons. 

I have been working fully remotely for many years now and enjoy the flexibility of being about to do this work from just about anywhere I have access to a computer with high speed access to the internet. This means that I can almost sit down in any location with any computer and do the majority of my work without any additional software or hardware aside from my cell phone. 

As long as I have access to a web browser, I can do 75% of my daily workload. That means email, Teams, Outlook, and access to a support portal. As you can guess, this requires secure authentication to these services. Secure authentication has changed a LOT over the years and lately it has taken a turn towards "Passkeys". 

Now I don't mind depending on a hardware device such as a phone, FIDO key, or other Authenticator service (app) that exchanges anonymous (random) data to allow access to a system (two factor auth). I do have a problem with a service that holds that data along with other data about me and has control over how that data is shared and who has control over that data (myself or the vendor).

Here is a good explanation of the benfits and pitalls of using these Passkeys along with some alternatives.

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/9/2/passkeys/

Raspberry Pi Project

I have been working with my son lately on a project for school using a Raspberry Pi for a Wifi "Honey Pot". We have been following a rather old blog post but it still works fine and is very informative.

https://andrewmichaelsmith.com/2013/08/raspberry-pi-wi-fi-honeypot/

We haven't had much trouble but can't get the redirect down just yet. I wouldn't really call this example specifically a "Honey Pot" as it doesn't really collect, or attempt to collect, any kind of data from people who connect. It's more of a proof of concept. The capability and groundwork is certainly there but it's merely a redirect of local web traffic to a local Apache install.

Microsoft Security Center

Here is the link to the MS Security Center.