side-channel

What is side-channel?

The side-channel npm package is designed to provide mechanisms for securely handling and transmitting sensitive information within a JavaScript environment. It is particularly useful in contexts where preventing information leakage is critical, such as in cryptographic operations or when handling personal data. The package offers functionalities to create secure channels for data, ensuring that the data is not exposed to unintended scopes or leaked through side channels.

What are side-channel's main functionalities?

Creating a secure side channel

This feature allows the creation of a secure side channel where you can safely store and retrieve data. The `set` method is used to store data associated with a given key, ensuring that the data is not accessible outside the intended scope.

const SideChannel = require('side-channel');
const channel = new SideChannel();
channel.set(key, value);

Retrieving data from a secure side channel

This code snippet demonstrates how to retrieve data from a secure side channel. The `get` method is used to access the data associated with a specific key, ensuring that the operation is safe and the data integrity is maintained.

const value = channel.get(key);

Other packages similar to side-channel

cryptiles

While 'cryptiles' is more focused on cryptographic utilities, it shares the goal of secure data handling with 'side-channel'. 'cryptiles' offers functions for securely generating random strings and fixed-size cryptographic tokens, which can be seen as complementary to the secure data transmission and storage functionalities provided by 'side-channel'.

README

side-channel

Store information about any JS value in a side channel. Uses WeakMap if available.

Warning: in an environment that lacks WeakMap, this implementation will leak memory until you delete the key.

Getting started

npm install --save side-channel

Usage/Examples

const assert = require('assert');
const getSideChannel = require('side-channel');

const channel = getSideChannel();

const key = {};
assert.equal(channel.has(key), false);
assert.throws(() => channel.assert(key), TypeError);

channel.set(key, 42);

channel.assert(key); // does not throw
assert.equal(channel.has(key), true);
assert.equal(channel.get(key), 42);

channel.delete(key);
assert.equal(channel.has(key), false);
assert.throws(() => channel.assert(key), TypeError);

Tests

Clone the repo, npm install, and run npm test

Changelog

v1.1.0 - 2024-12-11

Commits

• [Refactor] extract implementations to side-channel-weakmap, side-channel-map, side-channel-list ada5955
• [New] add channel.delete c01d2d3
• [types] improve types 0c54356
• [readme] add content be24868
• [actions] split out node 10-20, and 20+ c4488e2
• [types] use shared tsconfig 0e0d57c
• [Dev Deps] update @ljharb/eslint-config, @ljharb/tsconfig, @types/get-intrinsic, @types/object-inspect, @types/tape, auto-changelog, tape fb4f622
• [Deps] update call-bind, get-intrinsic, object-inspect b78336b
• [Tests] replace aud with npm audit ee3ab46
• [Dev Deps] add missing peer dep c03e21a