Node.js hashing of passwords

Question

I am currently using the following for hashing passwords:

var pass_shasum = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(req.body.password).digest('hex');

Could you please suggest improvements to make the project safer?

Answer 1

I use the follwing code to salt and hash passwords.

var bcrypt = require('bcrypt');

exports.cryptPassword = function(password, callback) {
   bcrypt.genSalt(10, function(err, salt) {
    if (err) 
      return callback(err);

    bcrypt.hash(password, salt, function(err, hash) {
      return callback(err, hash);
    });
  });
};

exports.comparePassword = function(plainPass, hashword, callback) {
   bcrypt.compare(plainPass, hashword, function(err, isPasswordMatch) {   
       return err == null ?
           callback(null, isPasswordMatch) :
           callback(err);
   });
};

Answer 2

bcrypt also can be called synchronously. Sample Coffeescript:

bcrypt = require('bcrypt')

encryptionUtil = 
    encryptPassword: (password, salt) ->
        salt ?= bcrypt.genSaltSync()
        encryptedPassword = bcrypt.hashSync(password, salt)
        {salt, encryptedPassword}

    comparePassword: (password, salt, encryptedPasswordToCompareTo) ->
        {encryptedPassword} = @encryptPassword(password, salt)
        encryptedPassword == encryptedPasswordToCompareTo

module.exports = encryptionUtil

Answer 3

Also there is bcrypt-nodejs module for node. https://github.com/shaneGirish/bcrypt-nodejs.

Previously I used already mentioned here bcrypt module, but fall into problems on win7 x64. On the other hand bcrypt-nodejs is pure JS implementation of bcrypt and does not have any dependencies at all.

Answer 4

You can use the bcrypt-js package for encrypting the password.

1. Try npm i bcryptjs
2. var bcrypt = require('bcryptjs') in top.
3. To hash a password:

bcrypt.genSalt(10, function(err, salt) {
    bcrypt.hash("B4c0/\/", salt, function(err, hash) {
        // Store hash in your password DB.
    });
});

4. To check your password,

// Load hash from your password DB.
bcrypt.compare("B4c0/\/", hash, function(err, res) {
    // res === true
});

You can visit https://www.npmjs.com/package/bcryptjs for more information on bcryptjs.

Answer 5

Try using Bcrypt, it secures the password using hashing.

bcrypt.hash(req.body.password, salt, (err, encrypted) => {
    user.password = encrypted
    next()
})

Where salt is the cost value which specifies the strength of hashing. While logging in, compare the password using bcrypt.compare method:

 bcrypt.compare(password, user.password, (err, same) => {
      if (same) {
           req.session.userId = user._id
           res.redirect('/bloglist')
      } else {
           res.end('pass wrong')
      }
 })

For more info, refer to this blog: https://medium.com/@nitinmanocha16/bcrypt-and-nodejs-e00a0d1df91f

Answer 6

Bcrypt isn't a bad choice, but there are a few gotchas:

1. It will truncate on NUL bytes.
2. It will truncate after 72 characters. If you're using passphrases, this might weaken your password unexpectedly.

As of October 2019, Argon2id is the optimal choice.

The preferred way of interfacing with Argon2id is through libsodium (a cryptography library that provides a lot of features). There are several bindings to choose from, but the easiest is probably sodium-plus.

const SodiumPlus = require('sodium-plus').SodiumPlus;
let sodium;
(async function(){
    if (!sodium) sodium = await SodiumPlus.auto(); // Autoload the backend

    let password = 'Your example password goes here. Provided by the user.';

    // Hashing...
    let hash = await sodium.crypto_pwhash_str(
        password,
        sodium.CRYPTO_PWHASH_OPSLIMIT_INTERACTIVE,
        sodium.CRYPTO_PWHASH_MEMLIMIT_INTERACTIVE
    );
    // You can safely store {hash} in a database.

    // Checking that a stored hash is still up to snuff...
    let stale = await sodium.crypto_pwhash_str_needs_rehash(
        hash,
        sodium.CRYPTO_PWHASH_OPSLIMIT_INTERACTIVE,
        sodium.CRYPTO_PWHASH_MEMLIMIT_INTERACTIVE
    );
    if (stale) {
        // Rehash password, update database
    }

    // Password verification
    let valid = await sodium.crypto_pwhash_str_verify(password, hash);
    if (valid) {
        // Proceed...
    }
})();

The documentation for sodium-plus on Github includes password hashing and storage.