Essential Cryptography for JavaScript Developers

Alessandro Segala

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781801076319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

Discover how to take advantage of common cryptographic operations to build safer apps that respect users' privacy with the help of examples in JavaScript for Node.js and browsersKey Features• Understand how to implement common cryptographic operations in your code with practical examples• Learn about picking modern safe algorithms, which libraries you should rely on, and how to use them correctly• Build modern and secure applications that respect your users' privacy with cryptographyBook DescriptionIf you're a software developer, this book will give you an introduction to cryptography, helping you understand how to make the most of it for your applications. The book contains extensive code samples in JavaScript, both for Node.js and for frontend apps running in a web browser, although the core concepts can be used by developers working with any programming language and framework. With a purely hands-on approach that is focused on sharing actionable knowledge, you'll learn about the common categories of cryptographic operations that you can leverage in all apps you're developing, including hashing, encryption with symmetric, asymmetric and hybrid ciphers, and digital signatures. You'll learn when to use these operations and how to choose and implement the most popular algorithms to perform them, including SHA-2, Argon2, AES, ChaCha20-Poly1305, RSA, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Later, you'll learn how to deal with password and key management. All code in this book is written in JavaScript and designed to run in Node.js or as part of frontend apps for web browsers. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build solutions that leverage cryptography to protect user privacy, offer better security against an expanding and more complex threat landscape, help meet data protection requirements, and unlock new opportunities.What you will learn• Write JavaScript code that uses cryptography running within a Node.js environment for the server-side or in frontend applications for web browsers• Use modern, safe hashing functions for calculating digests and key derivation, including SHA-2 and Argon2• Practice encrypting messages and files with a symmetric key using AES and ChaCha20-Poly1305• Use asymmetric and hybrid encryption, leveraging RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography with ECDH and ECIES• Calculate and verify digital signatures using RSA and ECDSA/EdDSA• Manage passwords and encryption keys safelyWho this book is forThis cryptography book is an introductory guide for software developers who don't necessarily have a background in cryptography but are interested in learning how to integrate it in their solutions, correctly and safely. You'll need to have at least intermediate-level knowledge of building apps with JavaScript and familiarity with Node.js to make the most of this book.

Part 1 – Getting Started

In this first section, we will begin with an overview of the main topics covered in this book, the various operations we're covering, and the core principles that will guide the rest of the book. We will then proceed to learn about how to work with binary and random data in Node.js, two common occurrences while working with cryptography.

This section comprises the following chapters:

• Chapter 1, Cryptography for Developers
• Chapter 2, Dealing with Binary and Random Data

Chapter 1: Cryptography for Developers

"Dance like no one's watching. Encrypt like everyone is."

– Anonymous

Few things are as important for application security as cryptography. Done properly, it can make data unreadable to attackers even if you suffer a breach. But do it wrong, and it can actually amplify the impact of other vulnerabilities.

While cryptography is incredibly accessible to developers nowadays, many still have questions around how to use it, when to use it, and which of the many options or algorithms to pick.

This book will try to answer those questions without going into formal, academic explanations, and without complex mathematical formulas or diagrams, in a way that is friendly to developers. Unlike many other books on the topic, our goal won't be to train you to become a cryptographer. Instead, by the end of this book, you'll hopefully have enough knowledge of the most important algorithms to be able to use them in your code confidently.

All code samples in this book are written in JavaScript and assume a Node.js execution environment, with the exception of Part 3, Cryptography in the browser, in which we'll look at the Web Crypto APIs for usage in a web browser. However, even if you code in a different programming language, you will be able to follow along to learn the core concepts, and then replicate them in your preferred stack using one of the many libraries that are available to you.

In this first chapter, we're going to introduce the book and cover the following topics:

• An overview of what cryptography is and why it matters to developers
• A definition of "safe" in the context of cryptography
• Types and "layers" of encryption

What is cryptography and why should a developer care?

Cryptography is everywhere around us and it impacts directly or indirectly on every aspect of our lives, every day, even when you don't notice it.

Cryptography is used to protect the information we share on the internet. You'll also find it when you're authenticating yourself to use your phone or laptop, or swiping the badge to get into your office. Cryptography is used to secure every digital payment transaction and to guarantee contracts that are signed digitally. It is also used to protect data we store on our devices, both from unauthorized access and from accidental corruption.

Protecting secrets…

Most people, even those who are not particularly tech-savvy, know that cryptography as the science and practice of protecting messages, files, and data, such as by encrypting and decrypting them.

In fact, this use of cryptography, to shield messages from adversaries, is thousands of years old. A common example is the Caesar cipher (a cipher is an algorithm used for encryption or decryption), which is named after the Roman emperor Julius Caesar; this is a classic example of a "substitution cipher," in which letters of the alphabet are substituted with one another. In the case of the Caesar cipher, each letter was shifted by three, so the letter A became D, B became E, Z became C, and so on.

Other famous historical ciphers include the Vigenère cipher, which in the 16th century first introduced the concept of an "encryption key," and then mechanical ones such as the Enigma machine, used by Nazi Germany during World War II and eventually broken by Polish and English researchers (this was also the topic of the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, which depicted the work of Alan Turing and the other researchers at Bletchley Park).

While the history of cryptography can be an interesting topic per se, and it provides invaluable lessons on common types of attacks against cryptography, all those historical ciphers are considered broken and so are not useful to modern application developers. As such, we won't be spending more time talking about them in this book, but nevertheless, I encourage curious readers to learn more about them!

…and the other uses of modern cryptography

Despite the strong association with ensuring confidentiality and hiding secrets, modern cryptography is used for much more than that.

In fact, throughout this book, we'll be using cryptographic functions for a variety of purposes, some of which are meant to be shared with the public rather than kept as secrets:

• In Chapter 3, File and Password Hashing with Node.js, we'll learn about hashing, which is a one-way cryptographic operation that allows you to derive a fixed-length digest for any message. This is used for purposes including checking the integrity of files or messages, generating identifiers and encryption keys, and protecting passwords.
• In Chapter 4, Symmetric Encryption in Node.js, and Chapter 5, Using Asymmetric and Hybrid Encryption in Node.js, we'll look at data encryption and decryption using various kinds of ciphers.
• In Chapter 6, Digital Signatures with Node.js and Trust, we'll learn how cryptography can be used to create and validate digital signatures, which can be used (among other things) to authenticate the author of a message, certifying its provenance, or preventing repudiation.

Why this matters to developers

As a software developer, understanding the practices presented above can help you build applications that implement cryptographic operations safely, using the most appropriate solutions. There are many possible uses of cryptography, and the aforementioned list contains only some examples.

Not all the operations we're going to learn about in this book will be useful or even relevant for every application you might be working on. However, the topics presented in the next chapters are possibly the most common ones, which developers can leverage to solve frequent real-world problems.

In fact, given the current state of application development, nowadays you could argue that knowing how to safely implement the solutions described in this book should be a skill most developers need to be at least somehow familiar with, without the need to consult with expert cryptographers.

Globally, cyberattacks have been getting more and more frequent every year and are carried out by increasingly more sophisticated adversaries, sometimes including state-sponsored actors. Just as attacks have increased in both quantity and quality, thanks to the pervasiveness of digital systems in our businesses and lives, the impact of breaches has grown costlier, with damage that can be in the range of millions of dollars and, in certain cases, catastrophic or fatal.

Whereas security used to be an afterthought in the software development life cycle, at times relegated to an issue for operations specialists only, teams are now tasked with considering it during every stage of the development process. Many organizations are also adopting practices such as DevSecOps and "shift left security," in which the security needs of an entire solution are included in the entire software development life cycle, from planning and development to operations.

DevOps and DevSecOps

DevOps is a set of principles and practices, aided by specialized tools, to enable the continuous delivery of value to end users. DevOps is built around practices such as Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD), agile software development, and continuous monitoring that are meant to bring the development and operations teams closer together and allow faster application release cycles, and continuous learning and improvement.

To learn more about DevOps, visit https://bit.ly/crypto-devops

Building on DevOps, DevSecOps requires the integration of security practices and thinking into every stage of the DevOps process – planning, building, delivering, and operating. Organizations that adopt DevSecOps believe that security is a shared responsibility among every person and team that has any dealing with an application.

To learn more about DevSecOps, visit https://bit.ly/crypto-devsecops

For example, whereas corporate or Local Networks (LANs) were traditionally considered safe, it's now common practice to assume your systems have been breached and practice defense in depth or add multiple layers of protection. So, an application that encrypts data in transit prevents an eavesdropper (called a Man-in-the-Middle or MitM) from potentially stealing secrets, even inside a LAN.

It should go without saying that while adding cryptography to your applications is often necessary to make them safe, it's almost always not sufficient. For example, protecting your users' data with strong encryption will help limit the impact of breaches but will be useless against account takeovers through social engineering.

Nevertheless, cryptography does play an important role in the process of protecting data; for example, it secures the data your application uses (both at rest and in transit), ensuring the integrity of the information stored or exchanged, authenticating end users or other services, preventing tampering, and so on.

In addition to learning about the different classes of cryptographic operations that you can take advantage of, with this book I also hope you will be equipped to understand when to use each one in the safest way possible.

In fact, just as not using cryptography can lead to serious consequences, implementing cryptography in the wrong way can be equally as bad. This can happen when developers use broken algorithms (for this reason, we'...

Table of contents

• Essential Cryptography for JavaScript Developers
• Contributors
• Preface
• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Chapter 1: Cryptography for Developers
• Chapter 2: Dealing with Binary and Random Data
• Part 2 – Using Common Cryptographic Operations with Node.js
• Chapter 3: File and Password Hashing with Node.js
• Chapter 4: Symmetric Encryption in Node.js
• Chapter 5: Using Asymmetric and Hybrid Encryption in Node.js
• Chapter 6: Digital Signatures with Node.js and Trust
• Part 3 – Cryptography in the Browser
• Chapter 7: Introduction to Cryptography in the Browser
• Chapter 8: Performing Common Cryptographic Operations in the Browser
• Other Books You May Enjoy