multi-factor-authenticationwebauthnpassword-less

Authenticate with webauthn using iphone on windows?


I have been investigating using webauthn for MFA in my company's application. It looked like a great fit when I started investigating it and I got really excited about the prospect of our users being able to use their phones as authenticators.

However, a colleague with an iPhone pointed out to me that when he tried the example application on https://webauthn.io/ he were not able to select his iPhone and there were only options to add a Android phone to his account. As many of our users he was using chrome on a Windows computer but has a iPhone 12.

To me it seems unthinkable that this scenario wouldn't be supported? Lots of users use Windows and have iOS devices. Am I missing something obvious?


Solution

  • The wording will change with Chrome 103 to something like „use your phone“.

    It already works with an iPhone as well, though. You may need to enable Platform Authenticator Syncing, as the feature is currently only in testing. In iOS 15, turn on the Syncing Platform Authenticator switch under Settings > Developer. The Developer menu is available on your device when you set it up as a development device in Xcode.

    Edit: seems like Chrome 103 still uses the "Add a new Android phone" wording :/ I already saw a screenshot somewhere teasing the change so I guess it will come rather sooner than later.