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  • Passkeys as MFA on GrapheneOS: a guide

xYz There will be a dialog asking you to enable Bluetooth, but you have to be able to scan the QR code first.

When you scan the code with the Camera app, a string starting with "FIDO:" should show. You then have to press the tiny "Go to" icon in the upper right corner of that tiny UI box. Then start the passkey flow. I could clarify this in the guide.

  • xYz replied to this.
    • Edited

    fid02 Thanks for the response. Using your clarification I got further than last time but still can't get it setup with Bitwarden (I want to setup a passkey to login to my Bitwarden account).

    I pressed the "go to" (box with and arrow) icon, chose to turn on Bluetooth, gave Google Play services permission, scanned the QR and at the next prompt chose "Skip the QR code next time," and then received an error message "Something went wrong, restart the process on your other device to try again." Upon going to to my other device (a Win 10 Pro laptop, standard user account) running Brave browser a popup says "Error creating passkey." I dismiss it and I see my GOS phone listed for vault.bitwarden.com. I click on it and a popup says "Check your device. A notification was sent to [name of GOS phone]." But I receive no notification.

    How is the passkey notification sent? I checked noticed Google Play Services noticed Notifications permission was turned off. I turned it on and tried again and get the same message that a notification was sent, but I see nothing on the phone. After several minutes the popup says "Something went wrong. Request timed out."

    So I deleted the passkey and went back through the process to create a passkey, but this time instead of saying, "Something went wrong..." it now says "No passkeys available. There aren't any applicable passkeys on this device. Try a new device or create a new passkey." Nevertheless my GOS phone passkey is once again listed in Brave Browser and it exhibits the same behavior as before when I attempt to use it... "Check your device... a notification was sent to [name of GOS phone]." I also tried disabling my laptop firewall, but it did not make a difference.

    [EDIT: Additional info]

      xYz Which version of Bitwarden are you using? Only the latest beta versions of Bitwarden have passkey support on Android. I'm on Bitwarden version 2024.4.1 (versioncode 10283). You'll have to opt-in to beta releases for this to work.

      If you're on the beta and it still doesn't work, could you try disabling and re-enabling the toggle for Bitwarden in Settings > Passwords & accounts > Cogwheel > Bitwarden?

      I did test this just now using the latest Bitwarden Beta and registration works fine, although sign-in does not work. I'll see if I can reproduce that on stock PixelOS and then report it to Bitwarden.

      xYz (I want to setup a passkey to login to my Bitwarden account).

      Oh, I missed that part. Do you have any password managers set in Settings > Passwords & accounts > Cogwheel? Could you please clarify if you are trying to save this passkey as MFA in your Bitwarden vault? Or for your Bitwarden account itself?

      And are you trying to save the passkey on the device and not in a password manager? Using this method, I'm not sure that is doable.

      • xYz replied to this.
        • Edited

        I can't find the passkey flag in Vanadium. Was it removed? ProtonPass says passkeys are not supported.

        Edit: nevermind. I was confused. It works. Also, wrong thread.

        Is the process described in the OP not a thing on Firefox? I tried the same thing except with FF and got nothing, went ahead and installed the Brave RPM and it worked right away.

          Storm Firefox on Fedora Linux does not show the passkey prompt for me. I have not tested other distributions on desktop. Firefox on Windows uses Windows' native FIDO authentication flow. I think it likely to be a missing feature in Firefox on Linux. (I thought I had posted about this, but apparently it didn't make it farther than my personal notebook).

            fid02 Bummer, I'm going to have to try it out later today then on my Windows 11 Desktop

            fid02 Thanks for the replies. I'm on non-beta Bitwarden 2024.5.1 (10574) and Bitwarden is set as my phone's password manager. I am trying to save the passkey to login to Bitwarden itself.

              xYz At the moment only the beta version of Bitwarden supports passkeys.

              Passkeys are not MFA and you cannot use Bitearden as your MFA. It can only be stored on the device locally

                Upstate1618 The first post in this thread describes how to save a FIDO private key in a password manager, instead of on a hardware key. "Passkeys" is just a term that users are familiar with. I could rename the topic to "FIDO private keys as MFA in a password manager on GrapheneOS", but who's going to care.

                If you are stuck and unable to continue with the guide, please specify what the issue is. If you want to make an argument for always using the term "passkey" in the FIDO Alliance's definition of the term as password-less authentication, please just start a new topic.

                  fid02 Google says "Your encrypted data is locked on this device" error message when creating passkey. What's wrong? Thank you.

                    Upstate1618 This is related to Google Password Manager not allowing you to store and sync passkeys to your Google account. I attempted to summarize the issue here, and I think the summary is still relevant: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium/issues/390#issuecomment-2028915920

                    It's not clear that this is an issue specific to GrapheneOS or non-stock Android OSs, as a web search on the issue shows that some users get this error even on stock Android OSs. They had to first activate passkey sync with Google Password Manager on a different device, before they could use it on their primary device. It's all a bit confusing and unclear.

                    Note that this does not affect the usage of passkeys with third-party password managers.

                    When I try to register a passkey directly from Vanadium, an error occured.
                    When I try to register a passkey from Edge on Windows on GOS, after turning on bluetooth, it keeps pending with connecting and then failed eventually.

                      Upstate1618 These happens AFTER I wipe my GPM due to the "Your encrypted data is locked on this device" error.

                        Upstate1618

                        Set on-device encryption on my Edge for PC

                        That is not going to work. The only way I know of getting passkey sync with Google Password Manager to work on GrapheneOS is to follow the exact steps that I outlined in my GitHub post. You have to provide the unlock PIN of a different phone, likely with a stock Android OS.

                        This thread is really not about troubleshooting Google Password Manager passkey sync. It is known to be problematic on GrapheneOS due to restrictions set by Google. Recommend creating a new thread.

                          fid02 thanks. I don't wanna login on my other android phone. Gotta wait for Bitwarden stable.

                          19 days later

                          Hi, can you help me with Proton? There are 2 problems.

                          1. I cannot register FIDO2 credentials on Vanadium for Proton. It ends with error messages like error while registering
                          2. I cannot use Bitwarden as FIDO2 on Vanadium for Proton. The FIDO2 credential on Bitwarden is registered on my Edge for PC and works well on Edge PC. However I cannot use it while logging in Proton through Vanadium.
                            Thanks.

                            Upstate1618 I cannot register FIDO2 credentials on Vanadium for Proton. It ends with error messages like error while registering

                            You should be able to do this from within Vanadium, without a computer, without a security key, and without following my guide. When you register a security key to your Proton account, make sure to select "Allow platform keys".