Zen and the art of edge authentication
summary
Demonstrates end-to-end passwordless login using WebAuthn passkeys implemented at the CDN edge: a live chat app runs its relying‑party logic on Fastly Compute, stores public keys in a global KV store, and performs cryptographic operations inside a WebAssembly runtime that cold‑starts in ~50 microseconds. Registration and authentication ceremonies use device TPM/secure enclave keys (private stays local), public keys replicate to ~97 PoPs (80% of users within 20 ms), and the demo works though the UI is slightly buggy.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker background
- 3:25Passwordless authentication with pass keys
- 7:00What are pass keys and WebAuthn
- 12:39Public key cryptography basics
- 13:42Pass key registration ceremony
- 18:19Pass key authentication ceremony
- 21:27Security benefits of pass keys
- 24:42Edge compute for authentication
- 26:27Fastly Compute overview
- 28:58Demo system architecture
- 33:11Implementation simplicity and future
- 34:18Q&A session
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