The FIDO Alliance was founded by PayPal, Lenovo, Nok Nok Labs, Validity Sensors, Infineon, and Agnitio, and work on a passwordless authentication protocol began in July 2012. FIDO protocols use standard public key cryptography techniques to provide stronger authentication and designed from the ground up to protect user privacy. This third-party authentication method greatly improves the user authentication experience, and there is no problem with FIDO Key battery life. Originally founded by several tech companies such as PayPal and Lenovo, the FIDO Alliance now includes large hardware manufacturers such as Intel and Samsung, as well as several financial institutions such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Chipwon Technology also joined FIDO Alliance in October 2022.
The public key cryptography techniques makes the server database no longer a target for hackers, because the public key is stored in the server ,and the private key is securely stored on the device. Without the corresponding private key, the public key becomes useless. The FIDO standard allows passwordless authentication between servers, authenticators, and browsers. The challenge of the server using the stored public key to randomly generate the authenticator's signature. This signature can be used to prove that the user owns the private key, while a random challenge prevents replay attacks.