I'm looking for some examples of how to securely store passwords and other sensitive data using node.js and mongodb.
I want everything to use a unique salt that I will store along side the hash in the mongo document.
For authentication do I have to just salt and encrypt the input and match it to a stored hash?
Should I ever need to decrypt this data and if so how should I do it?
How are the private keys, or even salting methods securely stored on the server?
I've heard the AES and Blowfish are both good options, what should I use?
Any examples of how to design this would be wonderfully helpful!
Thanks!
Use this: https://github.com/ncb000gt/node.bcrypt.js/
bcrypt is one of just a few algorithms focused on this use case. You should never be able to decrypt your passwords, only verify that a user-entered cleartext password matches the stored/encrypted hash.
bcrypt is very straightforward to use. Here is a snippet from my Mongoose User schema (in CoffeeScript). Be sure to use the async functions as bycrypt is slow (on purpose).
class User extends SharedUser
defaults: _.extend {domainId: null}, SharedUser::defaults
#Irrelevant bits trimmed...
password: (cleartext, confirm, callback) ->
errorInfo = new errors.InvalidData()
if cleartext != confirm
errorInfo.message = 'please type the same password twice'
errorInfo.errors.confirmPassword = 'must match the password'
return callback errorInfo
message = min4 cleartext
if message
errorInfo.message = message
errorInfo.errors.password = message
return callback errorInfo
self = this
bcrypt.gen_salt 10, (error, salt)->
if error
errorInfo = new errors.InternalError error.message
return callback errorInfo
bcrypt.encrypt cleartext, salt, (error, hash)->
if error
errorInfo = new errors.InternalError error.message
return callback errorInfo
self.attributes.bcryptedPassword = hash
return callback()
verifyPassword: (cleartext, callback) ->
bcrypt.compare cleartext, @attributes.bcryptedPassword, (error, result)->
if error
return callback(new errors.InternalError(error.message))
callback null, result
Also, read this article, which should convince you that bcrypt is a good choice and help you avoid becoming "well and truly effed".