Codecademy Logo

Password Authentication

Cryptography

Cryptography is the process of encrypting and decrypting data in order to keep that data safe when storing or transmitting it.

  • Encryption is a way of hiding data by converting it to an encoded format.

  • Decryption is a way of revealing encrypted data by decoding it from its encoded format.

Symmetric Vs. Asymmetric Encryption

Ciphers can be symmetric or asymmetric.

  • Symmetric encryption uses the same key to encrypt and decrypt information.
  • Asymmetric encryption uses a public key to encrypt data and a different private key to decrypt data.

Asymmetric ciphers can be slower than symmetric ciphers but have additional use-cases in authentication and non-repudiation.

Hashing

Hashing is a one-way process that takes data of any size and represents it as a unique hash value of a fixed size. No matter how large or complex your file is, hashing provides a fast, reliable way to compare files and verify their authenticity.

Hashing lets you check if two pieces of information are the same, without knowing what the information itself actually is.

Hashing can be used to store sensitive data in a secure way.

A diagram showing that encryption uses keys to encrypt and decrypt data while hashing results in data being transformed into a hash.

Encoding

Encoding transforms data into a form that can be used by a different type of system.

It is NOT a way to secure data because encoded information is easily reversed and only requires knowledge of the algorithm used to decode information.

This example shows part of a basic ASCII table.

Letter Decimal Encoding Binary Encoding
A 65 100 0001
B 66 100 0010
C 67 100 0011

Obfuscation

Obfuscation means to hide the meaning of something by making it difficult to understand.

Programmers might do this to hide the meaning of code or make it harder for users to hack. Malicious actors might also do this to make it harder to discover software is actually a virus!

Passport’s Local Strategy

The LocalStrategy object will take in an anonymous function with the parameters: username, password, and the callback function done.

done takes in:

  • An error or null if no error found
  • A user or false if no user found

done supplies a user to Passport if a user is authenticated. The anonymous function will:

  1. Verify login
  2. If login details are valid, done is invoked and the user is authenticated
  3. If the user is not authenticated, pass false into done
passport.use(new LocalStrategy(
  function (username, password, done) {


    db.users.findByUsername(username, (err, user) => {
      if(err) return done(err);


      if(!user) return done(null, false);


      if(user.password != password) return done(null, false);


      return done(null, user)
    });
  })
);

Serializing & Deserializing Users with Passport

serializeUser() takes a user id and stores it internally on req.session.passport which is Passport’s internal mechanism to keep track of things.

deserializeUser() uses the id to retrieve the data and return an object with data.

If there is an error, we return the error.

If there is no error the first argument in done() is null, and the second argument is the user id, the value that we want to store in our Passport’s internal session.

passport.serializeUser((user, done) => {
  done(null, user.id);
});


passport.deserializeUser((id, done) => {
  db.users.findById(id, function (err, user) {
    if (err) return done(err); 
    done(null, user);
  });
});

Logging In with passport-local

We can process the authentication and, if successful, serialize the user for us. This is shown in the app.post("/login" ... ); code.

passport.authenticate() is middleware and takes in:

  • Which strategy to employ. We should use "local".
  • An object with failureRedirect set to "/login". This will redirect to "/login" if login fails.

If successful, we go to the user’s profile.

The “/profile” endpoint uses the serialized user found in req.user and renders the profile page.

app.post("/login",
  passport.authenticate("local", { failureRedirect : "/login"}),
  (req, res) => {
    res.redirect("profile");
  }
);


app.get("/profile", (req, res) => {
  res.render("profile", { user: req.user });
});

Registering User’s with passport-local

We will create an asynchronouse route handler using async/await. We’ll retrieve the user data from req.body and await as we call our helper function to create the new user.

  • If a newUser is successfully created, we send a status code of 201 and a relevant msg response.

  • If there is an error, we return a status code of 500.

NOTE: In a real development environment, passwords should be hashed whenever a user registers.

app.post("/register", async (req, res) => {
  const { username, password } = req.body;
  const newUser = await db.users.createUser({ username, password });
  if (newUser) {
    res.status(201).json({
      msg: "Insert Success Message Here",
      newUser
    });
  } else {
    res.status(500).json({ msg: "Insert Failure Message Here" });
  }
}

Logging Out using passport-local

req.logout will log a user out of the application.

res.redirect("/login"); will redirect the user to the login page.

By terminating the session, the user will have to re-authenticate in order to create a new session.

app.get("/logout", (req, res) => {
  req.logout();
  res.redirect("/login");
});

Hashing Passwords with bcrypt.js

You can generate a salt and hash with bcrypt.js using 3 steps:

  • Generate Salt.

The built-in genSalt() function automatically generates a salt for us.

  • Hash Password

bcrypt.hash() takes in a password string and a salt. We await and return this function call since it will return the hashed password.

  • Return null if there’s an error

In the catch block, we print out the error. Then, we return null.

const passwordHash = async (password, saltRounds) => {
  try {
    const salt = await bcrypt.genSalt(saltRounds);
    return await bcrypt.hash(password, salt);
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
  }
  return null;
};

Verifying a Password Using bcrypt.js

The process of comparing passwords is:

  • Retrieve Plaintext Password
  • Hash Password
  • Compare Hashed Password with Hash Stored in database

We use bcrypt.compare() to compare the provided password, password, and the stored hashed password, hash. bcrypt.compare() can deduce the salt from the provided hash and hashes the provided password for comparison.

The return value will be true if the provided password is valid.

We return false outside of the try/catch block if there is an error.

const comparePasswords = async (password, hash) => {
  try {
    const matchFound = await bcrypt.compare(password, hash);
    return matchFound;
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
  }
  return false;
};

Rainbow Tables

A rainbow table is a massive table of common passwords and password-hash combinations used by attackers to break into accounts. One common technique we can take to protect ourselves from rainbow table attacks is the use of salts.

An image showing that adding the salt "abc" to the end of the password "p@ssw0rd" changes the hash stored in the database. This means that an attacker who has stolen the hash won't find a match in their rainbow table and discover the user's password is "p@ssw0rd".

Salts

A salt is a secret random string that is combined with a password prior to hashing specifically to defend against the use of rainbow tables.

Rainbow tables are large lookup databases that consist of pre-computed password-hash combinations which correlate plaintext passwords with their hashes.

An image showing that adding the salt "abc" to the end of the password "p@ssw0rd" changes the hash stored in the database. This means that an attacker who has stolen the hash won't find a match in their rainbow table and discover the user's password is "p@ssw0rd".

Previous

Next

Learn More on Codecademy

Free course

User Authentication & Authorization in Express

In this course, you'll learn how to implement User Authentication and Authorization in an Express web application.
Intermediate
6 Lessons