  Even though passwordless authentication to online accounts offers greater
security and protection from attack, passwords remain prevalent. Passwordless
authentication adoption is impacted by the slow adoption of external hardware
keys required to generate the security keys within the authentication protocol.
We have developed a virtual WebAuthn authenticator in order to provide an
extensible open source platform for understanding the associated standards of
WebAuthn and CTAP2. Our authenticator provides secure software authentication
for devices that do not have access to a physical hardware interface. Our
authenticator also provides an alternative to an external physical hardware key
and supports the use of a trusted platform module (TPM) on a device to generate
the security keys within a WebAuthn protocol.
