Written by P

Description: Discover how you can take advantage of passkeys in managed environments at work. We'll explore how passkeys can work well in enterprise environments through Managed Apple ID support for iCloud Keychain. We'll also share how administrators can manage passkeys for specific devices using Access Management controls in Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager.

Deploy Passkeys at Work

Passkeys

Passkeys are replacements for passwords. Benefits of passkeys are: 1. Much faster and easier to sign in with 2. Guarenteed to be more secure because they are strong and unique 3. Phising resistant 4. Available on all devices via secure syncing 5. Great user experience

"passkey" is lowercase because it is an industry standard term like "password"

For more information https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10092

Phishing

Phising attacks on employers are one of the top attacks that enterprises have to defend against and are typically the initial foothold for attackers in major breaches. Because there is nothing to type, users cannot be tricked into putting their information in the wrong place. Passkeys are intrinsically linked to the website or app it's used for.

Stolen Credentials

Typically passwords are stored as a hash on a server. This leads to a possibility of hashes being stolen and cracked. Passkeys, on the other hand, are stored as a public key. For hackers, this is not worth stealing as it does not provide any benefit.

2FA

Attackers are increasingly tricking users to bypass the three most popular forms of 2FA.

With passkeys, layering on SMS, time-based one-time password, and push notifications adds no extra security.

User Experience

Using passkeys provides the user with a much better experience. Creating/signing in is as simple as using Face ID

Managing Passkeys at Work

Requirements in managed environments: 1. Manage the Apple IDs used with iCloud Keychain and passkeys 2. Ensure passkeys only sync to managed devices 3. Store passkeys created for work in iCloud Keychain of managed accounts 4. Prove to relying parties that passkey creation happens on managed devices 5. Turn off sharing of passkeys between employees

Access Management functionality

There are two different controls administrators can use.

Administrators can allow managed Apple ID on: - Any Device - Managed Devices Only - Supervised Devices Only

In addition they have the options for allowing iCloud on: - Any Device - Managed Devices Only - Supervised Devices Only

A new configuration to provision passkeys was added: com.apple.configuration.security.passkey.attestation. This new configuration: - References an identity asset - Provides identity attests enterprise passkeys - Is available on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS

Example passkey attestation configuration

// Example configuration: com.apple.configuration.security.passkey.attestation

{
    "Type": "com.apple.configuration.security.passkey.attestation",
    "Identifier": "B1DC0125-D380-433C-913A-89D98D68BA9C",
    "ServerToken": "8EAB1785-6FC4-4B4D-BD63-1D1D2A085106",
    "Payload": {
        "AttestationIdentityAssetReference": "88999A94-B8D6-481A-8323-BF2F029F4EF9",
        "RelyingParties": [
            "www.example.com"
        ]
    }
}

This is how the process works: 1. The MDM server sends the passkey attestation configuration and identity asset to the device 2. The identity certificate is provisioned from the corporate certificate authority server 3. The website a user connects to requests a passkey for access 4. The device generates a new passkey, attests to it using the provision identity certificate, and returns it to the website 5. The website verifies the attestation by checking that the device certificate inside the Web Authentication enterprise attestation payload chains back to the organization

Reliant parties will need to verify the attestation statement inside Web Authentication passkey creation response. They will do this by verifying the following: 1. The AAGUID came from an Apple Device 2. The algorithm is set to -7 for ES256 on Apple platforms 3. There is a byte string containing the attestation signature 4. There is an array with the attestation certificate and its certificate chain

Example

// WebAuthn Packed Attestation Statement Format

attestationObject: {
    "fmt": "packed",
    "attStmt": {
        "alg": -7, // for ES256
        "sig": bytes,
        "x5c": [ attestnCert: bytes, * (caCert: bytes) ]
    }
    "authData": {
        "attestedCredentialData": {
            "aaguid": “dd4ec289-e01d-41c9-bb89-70fa845d4bf2”, // for Apple devices
            <…>
        }
        <…>
    }
    <…>
}