node-cipher

node-cipher

Securely encrypt sensitive files for use in public source control. Find on NPM.

Why should I use node-cipher?

Let's say you have a file in your project name config.json which contains sensitive information like private keys and database passwords. What should you do if you need to publicly host a repository containing this file? Certainly you wouldn't want to make the contents of config.json visible to the outside world.

You could remove the file from source control and send the file to everyone in your team every time you update the file, but this approach is very cumbersome. Instead, you can use node-cipher to encrypt the file and add the encrypted version to source control. This can later be decrypted by each team member independently with a password that you provide. Every time you or one of your team members makes a change to config.json, just re-encrypt the file and commit. It's that easy!

Don't forget to add the original config.json file to .gitignore!

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:exclamation: If you're looking for the node-cipher command line tool, it has moved to node-cipher-cli.

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Install

$ npm install node-cipher

Options

Name	Type	Description	Required	Default
input	string	The file that you wish to encrypt or decrypt.	✓
output	string	The file that you wish to save the encrypted or decrypted contents to. This file does not necessarily need to exist beforehand.	✓
password	string	The password to use when deriving the encryption key.	✓
salt	string	The salt to use when deriving the encryption key.		"nodecipher"
iterations	number	The number of iterations to use when deriving the key. The higher the number of iterations, the more secure the derived key will be, but will take a longer amount of time to complete.		1000
keylen	number	The desired byte length for the derived key.		512
digest	string	The HMAC digest algorithm with which to derive the key.		"sha1"
algorithm	string	The cipher algorithm to use when encrypting or decrypting the input file. Use list() to see a list of available cipher algorithms.		"cast5-cbc"

Methods

• encrypt()
• encryptSync()
• decrypt()
• decryptSync()
• list()

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encrypt()

encrypt(options[, callback[, scope]])

Encrypts a file using the options provided. Returns undefined.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
options	Object	See options.	✓
callback	Function	The function to call when the encryption has completed.
scope	Object	The scope for the callback function parameter, if provided.

Example

Encrypts config.json into config.json.cast5 using the password "passw0rd".

let nodecipher = require('node-cipher');

nodecipher.encrypt({
  input: 'config.json',
  output: 'config.json.cast5',
  password: 'passw0rd'
}, function (err) {
  if (err) throw err;

  console.log('config.json encrypted.');
});

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encryptSync()

encryptSync(options)

The synchronous version of encrypt(). Returns undefined.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
options	Object	See options.	✓

Example

Synchronously encrypts config.json into config.json.cast5 using the password "passw0rd".

let nodecipher = require('node-cipher');

nodecipher.encryptSync({
  input: 'config.json',
  output: 'config.json.cast5',
  password: 'passw0rd'
});

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decrypt()

decrypt(options[, callback[, scope]])

Decrypts a file using the options provided. Returns undefined.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
options	Object	See options.	✓
callback	Function	The function to call when the decryption has completed.
scope	Object	The scope for the callback function parameter, if provided.

Example

Decrypts config.json.cast5 back into config.json using the password "passw0rd".

let nodecipher = require('node-cipher');

nodecipher.decrypt({
  input: 'config.json.cast5',
  output: 'config.json',
  password: 'passw0rd'
}, function (err) {
  if (err) throw err;

  console.log('config.json.cast5 decrypted.');
});

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decryptSync()

decryptSync(options)

The synchronous version of decrypt(). Returns undefined.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
options	Object	See options.	✓

Example

Synchronously decrypts config.json.cast5 back into config.json using the password "passw0rd".

let nodecipher = require('node-cipher');

nodecipher.decryptSync({
  input: 'config.json.cast5',
  output: 'config.json',
  password: 'passw0rd'
});

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list()

list():Array

Lists all available cipher algorithms as an Array. Returns Array.

Example

let nodecipher = require('node-cipher');

console.log(nodecipher.list());
// => ['CAST-cbc', 'aes-128-cbc', ..., 'seed-ofb']

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Debug

Node-cipher implements debug for development logging. To set up node-cipher with debug, set the following environment variables:

Mac OS:

$ export DEBUG=nodecipher:*

Windows:

$ set DEBUG=nodecipher:*

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Authors

• Nathan Buchar

License

MIT