Keep in mind, still discussing the underlying fundamentals and not the user experience.

MitM attacks are frequently covered in white hat hacking, often after an actual event takes place. It is considered a third party attack, and it does break trust. It is a security threat, and to claim it doesn’t count is absurd. I’ve seen a few reports personally from internal, but I’m not at liberty to speak specifics about them. On the topic of replay attacks, TOTP is vulnerable, but passkeys are not (yet, I’ve seen people try though). This isn’t the only type of MitM attack, and, again, both are somewhat vulnerable.

TOTP is nothing, nowhere similar to passkeys in any way. You do NOT generate codes with passkeys. Passkeys are a form of public/private keys that are used to create a challenge/response request and used to generate a digital signature. The keys are not passwords (aka “shared secrets”). Digital signatures are also not passwords. The only other thing I can think you mean by “code generation” is that you’re using it as a generic catch-all, but that happens with…well everything (even passwords), depending on context.

I don’t want to sound too much like a die hard passkey fan - and you are right - passkeys are extremely overkill if you use anything above a plain old password. In some cases, layered security can be just as effective. The problem is that most people do only use plain old passwords. If we can get any kind of extra security, even TOTP, then all the better. There are also some cases passkeys are not feasible, so it’s good to have alternatives.

That’s false, TOTP can and has been the target of man in the middle attacks, successfully. The implementation of passkeys makes man in middle attacks more difficult, but it could still happen. So both are susceptible to third parties to some degree.

As far as point of view, I was assuming we were talking about the process, since the goal of passkey UX is to be largely the ‘same as’. Which, to be frank, is way less dedicated since both the implementation of passwords and passkeys can vary widely (2fa, email, id, otp, etc). If we exclude those, the UX is the same - some users might be even using passkeys and not know it.

TOTP is based on shared secrets, just like passwords. As such, it’s susceptible to many of the issues passwords are and is much closer to passwords than passkeys. Passkeys on the other hand, don’t have shared secrets and operate completely differently under the hood.

No. It’s a completely different process. It’s a bad name for what it actually does. (Unless you’re talking about how computers do things, then EVERYTHING is numbers)

Look up public/private key pair encryption. It’s the process that has changed.

The problem with all these “what are passkeys” guides is that it’s difficult to convey the differences between password and passkeys if you don’t have a deep understanding of encryption or authentication systems.

You need to take the bad with the good, otherwise you’ll never understand how far we’ve come. We hold on to slavery to remind us what it took, how efforts were not in vain, and to continue work on pushing for the things we believe in. We are here today because of the hardships we have endured yesterday. It’s not “white guilt”, it’s to remind the world that slavery is bad no matter who does it, to teach us what it looks like, and that we all benefit from eliminating slavery, no matter the form it takes.

When we forget those things, we have things like the anti-vacc movement. People who have their own beliefs that fly in the face of reality, who’ve never had the experiences first hand, and to bend the notion of what is good. It rewrites the legacy of people’s efforts, obscures the lessons used to fight, and trivializes the problems of the time. It manipulates both people and purpose and turns it against each.

My own opinion: Nobody feels guilty about slavery. There are only those that feel regret it’s not still around.