FIDO2 is the umbrella term for a passwordless authentication open standard that was developed by the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance, an industry consortium comprised of technology firms and other service providers. FIDO 2 is comprised of two core components. The first one is the FIDOWebAuthn API, which industry leaders are incorporating into their browsers,such as Mozilla, Chrome, Edge and WebKit. Second, there’s the Client to Authenticator (CTAP) protocol which provides FIDO 2-capable devices an interface for external authenticators via USB, NFC, or Bluetooth.
The Web Authentication API (which is also known as WebAuthn) is a specification written by the W3C and FIDO, with the participation of Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Yubico, and others. The API allows users to be authenticated using public key cryptography.
FIDO WebAuthn is the most secure and usable authentication method on the web. There are a numver of reasons for this, including the fact that it minimizes login friction. A simple and familiar gesture lets users authenticate. Also, it is the only web authentication method that is phishing resistant, and it is standard based and implemented across browsers and operating systems. WebAuthn let users authenticate with two types of authenticators:
WebAuthn works by generating a private/public key pair for every web origin which are registered in the device or security key. Because the key pair is bound to the domain, it helps protect users from phishing attacks. If the attacker tricks them into using WebAuthn in a different domain, the WebAuthn authenticator will not have a key pair for that domain and authentication process will fail. The attacker not be able to get any data that can identify the user.
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