This isn’t the only company to look into passwordless authentication lately, as key players such as Apple, Google and Microsoft partnered in 2022 to support a new password-free sign-in system named WebAuthn. With the acquisition of v, Bitwarden could go one step further and contribute to a passwordless future. However, according to, what makes Bitwarden stand out is its open-source nature, which means that it offers full transparency into its codebase while enabling allowing community members to further improve the system and to help develop new features. These kinds of services aim to minimise same-password use across a variety of online services thus making it harder for hackers to gain fraudulent access to accounts. Bitwarden offers a password management service that enables individuals and enterprises to automatically create hard-to-guess passwords and store them all in a secure vault. v is a passwordless authentication technology provider that aims to help companies improve their security as well as their user experience. Requests expire and are purged from the database every 15 minutes if they aren't approved or denied.US-based password management platform Bitwarden has acquired Sweden-based startup v to support authentication without passwords.

ª - Auth-request public and private keys are uniquely generated for each passwordless login request and only exist for as long as the request does. The initiating client then uses the access code and fulfilled authentication request to authenticate the user with the Bitwarden Identity service. The initiating client then locally decrypts the master key and master password hash using the auth-request private key. The initiating client GETs the encrypted master key and encrypted master password hash. The approving client then PUTs the encrypted master key and encrypted master password hash to the Authentication Request record and marks the request fulfilled. When the request is approved, the approving client encrypts the account's master key and master password hash using the auth-request public key enclosed in the request.

Registered devices, meaning mobile or desktop apps that are logged in and have a device-specific GUID stored in the Bitwarden database, are provided the request.

The initiating client POSTs a request, which includes the account email address, a unique auth-request public keyª, and an access code, to an Authentication Request table in the Bitwarden database. When logging in with a device is initiated:

Bitwarden online vault