Said It Here

Do mandatory passkeys bypass traditional two-factor authentication?

Mandatory passkeys can completely bypass traditional two-factor authentication with a single button click if a computer is left unlocked. This leaves systems vulnerable to internal actors and agents that can inflict damage regardless of scoped access or marketing claims about sandboxing.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    patching exploits as soon as possible
  2. 2
    utilizing network segmentation
  3. 3
    moving to strong encryption 2FA, and current best practice password policies
  4. 4
    planning for failure as a foregone conclusion and planning for recovery
  5. 5
    Using hardware passkeys like Yubico or Token2 that require a PIN
  6. 6
    Falling back to traditional security methods like password reset by email where supported
  7. 7
    Storing passkeys in password managers that require biometrics or a PIN

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/sysadmin3 people · September 2026

I have not seen the attack I am worried about. agent poisoning at the LLM level. The attacker will already be in the building and even if access is scoped correctly damage will occur.source ↗

Main_Ambassador_4985 · r/sysadmin · 1 upvotes

how did it find credentials if it was sandboxed? Or is sandboxed just a general term to make CEO's and investors think the latest Frankenstein just broke its chainssource ↗

Fallingdamage · r/sysadmin · 1 upvotes

A bunch of tools we use are rolling out passkeys as mandatory instead of password/2FA requirement.source ↗

A user leaves their computer unlocked. A bad actor enters the user's email address on their computer. They click the one button to use the passkey. 2FA never played a factor in that login, it's barely even one factor...source ↗

bbbbbthatsfivebees · r/sysadmin

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised