Vaulted Passkeys: A Device-Bound Proposal for Authenticated Credential Export and Import

Abstract

Hardware authenticators deliberately resist private-key extraction, yet replacement, disaster recovery, and controlled migration create a legitimate need for portability. Existing guidance for device-bound credentials commonly reduces recovery risk by registering an additional authenticator before failure. That creates an independent credential registration and requires replacement hardware to exist in advance; it is redundancy, not a backup of the original credential. This paper addresses the resulting recovery gap by exporting protected credential state while the source is available and restoring it to hardware acquired later, without cloning a complete authenticator or exposing plaintext private keys to routine desktop software. We propose Vaulted Passkeys, a device-bound architecture in which a random 256-bit Kvault protects authenticated PKV1 credential envelopes through HKDF-separated keys and four explicit AEAD profiles. The design separates enrollment from export/import and the required vault from optional identity. We contribute a role-separated system model, wire format, threat analysis, implementation mapping, and falsifiable evaluation plan. The prototype demonstrates feasibility but is neither a formal security proof nor a proposed final standard.