Microsoft documents attacks in which ShinyHunters and Helix-linked gangs impersonate the help desk to steer employees toward passkey-themed phishing pages, then exfiltrate Microsoft 365 data. The defense rests less on the passkey itself than on phishing-resistant authentication and session revocation.

On August 3, 2026, Unit 42 (Palo Alto Networks) published three attacks dubbed Pass-ta-key that allow malware on a compromised Windows machine to hijack passkeys synced through Google Password Manager. The most severe, Golden Pass-ta-key, extracts the master encryption key from Chrome's memory and compromises all current and future passkeys on the victim's Google account.