Why You Should Hash

All passwords should be hashed before entering a database because you have to consider the scenario where some malicious user attempts to gain entry into your data. Passwords are sensitive pieces of information that you don’t want people to see.

Now let’s not confuse encryption with hashing. Encrypting something assumes it can later be decrypted. Although this is better than leaving as plain text, what we really want is something that cannot be decrypted. This is what hashing offers us.

Hashing with Bcrypt

For this example we’re going to use the more popular bcryptjs library for Node.js. However, the rules it follows the same rules as other standard Bcrypt libraries. You pass in a string to be hashed and usually a salt as well.

For the example of bcryptjs you would do something like this, per the documentation:

The hash produced from that would not be human readable and thus safe to store within a database. But how do you compare the passwords in the scenario where you need to implement a user login?

Validating Against Saved Passwords

Bcrypt libraries always have a function for comparing a plain text password against a hash. This is how you would validate a password in the scenario of user login.

The above two lines were pretty much taken from the documentation. In the first line, the comparison will fail and return false back to the user. In this event you know the values are wrong without even knowing what the hashed password really is. In the event of the second line, the passwords match and you’ll get a true response back.

A Working Example

Let’s make a working example from what we’ve learned above. Create a new directory somewhere and in it create a new package.json file with the following JSON:

The important parts are the dependencies. We’re including bcryptjs for hashing, couchbase for communication to Couchbase via our application, and uuid for generating unique document keys.

Now we need to create a new file called config.json in our project directory and include the following JSON:

You should swap out the server and bucket with whatever you plan to use.

Now for the fun stuff! Create a file called app.js as this is where all our code is going to go. Keep in mind that this is an example, so functionality will be limited. Add the following JavaScript code to the app.js file:

We’re essentially just creating a JSON document with a hashed password and inserting it into Couchbase Server. After inserting is complete, we get the document and compare passwords.

Conclusion

You should never store plain text passwords in your database. It doesn’t matter how secure your database is or what type of database you’re using. By using the Bcrypt hashing algorithm on your passwords you can add a tremendous amount of security for your users.

The bcryptjs library for Node.js is just one of many suitable libraries that can accomplish this job.

Author

Posted by Nic Raboy, Developer Advocate, Couchbase

Nic Raboy is an advocate of modern web and mobile development technologies. He has experience in Java, JavaScript, Golang and a variety of frameworks such as Angular, NativeScript, and Apache Cordova. Nic writes about his development experiences related to making web and mobile development easier to understand.

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