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doc: add caveats and example to crypto.timingSafeEqual #41837
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`crypto.timingSafeEqual` has a number of caveats to its use that are worth mentioning. While surrounding code isn't strictly the responsibility of `crypto.timingSafeEqual`, documenting these pitfalls may help avoid some very common errors.
@nodejs/crypto |
Welcome @lostfictions and thank you for the contribution!
Do you have an example use case that potentially passes inputs to |
secretBuffer.write(secret); | ||
|
||
return timingSafeEqual(inputBuffer, secretBuffer) && | ||
inputBuffer.length === Buffer.byteLength(secret); |
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Unfortunately, operations such as Buffer.byteLength(secret)
are generally not timing-safe.
Fair enough! Maybe this is all extraneous and
I actually saw this is in the wild in a package with 240,000 downloads per week: Admittedly maybe the bigger issue here is "never use basic auth"? |
#41507 recently added documentation about an error case for
crypto.timingSafeEqual
, but even with that addition I think there are a few extra caveats totimingSafeEqual
's use that are worth mentioning. I've tried to be as clear as possible in this addition without going outside the scope of documentation for a single function (ie. into the realm of broader crypto best practices). I've also added a short example for the function.