Mozilla has decided to offer a new login method for users. The company has announced that it will add support to Windows Hello starting from Firefox 66. With this in place, users will be able to login to their Windows 10 device with the help of facial recognition, fingerprint sensor, and PIN.
Windows Hello will be supported on Firefox 66
Facial recognition and fingerprint sensors can also be used to login to Microsoft services. That being said you need to have supporting hardware. In the recent past, the web authentication API is supported by all modern browsers. This allows users to sign-in for services and websites using physical security key.
The support for Windows Hello will add an additional layer of security and will make it very difficult for hackers and intruders to gain access. Most of the new computers come equipped with a fingerprint reader and thus will automatically support biometric authentication. That apart a majority of password managers also support biometric authentication.
It’s also worth mentioning that Microsoft has added Windows Hello support for Microsoft Edge. The fact that Mozilla is adding Windows Hello support came to light after J.C Jones, web authenticator editor for Mozilla was addressing a bug.
“WebAuthn no longer works on Windows Insider builds, as compatible security keys are no longer available via the USB HID interface. (Basically, u2f-hid-rs [1] will stop supporting Windows 10+). Sometime this spring, Firefox 66 or 67 (and ESR 60) will need to use the Windows Hello API on when available to interact with Web Authentication. Otherwise, no devices will be detected, and we’ll have a Windows feature regression.”
Thankfully the bug has been resolved and Mozilla users should soon be able to use Windows Hello.
