node-sodium

Uses Libsodium 1.0.10

Port of the lib sodium Encryption Library to Node.js.

As of libsodium 1.0.10 all functions except memory allocation have been implemented. Missing functions are listed in docs/not implemented.md.

There's a "low level" native module that gives you access directly to Lib Sodium, and a friendlier high level API that makes the library a bit easier to use.

Check docs/low-level-api.md for a list of all lib sodium functions included in node-sodium.

Usage

Just a quick example that uses the same public/secret key pair to encrypt and then decrypt the message.

var sodium = require('sodium');        
var box = new sodium.Box();     // random key pair, and nonce generated automatically

var cipherText = box.encrypt("This is a secret message", "utf8");
var plainText = box.decrypt(cipherText);

Low Level API

A low level API is provided for advanced users. The functions available through the low level API have the exact same names as in lib sodium, and are available via the sodium.api object. Here is one example of how to use some of the low level API functions to encrypt/decrypt a message:

var sodium = require('sodium').api;

// Generate keys
var sender = sodium.crypto_box_keypair();
var receiver = sodium.crypto_box_keypair();

// Generate random nonce
var nonce = new Buffer(sodium.crypto_box_NONCEBYTES);
sodium.randombytes_buf(nonce);

// Encrypt
var plainText = new Buffer('this is a message');
var cipherMsg = sodium.crypto_box(plainText, nonce, receiver.publicKey, sender.secretKey);

// Decrypt
var plainBuffer = sodium.crypto_box_open(cipherMsg,nonce,sender.publicKey, receiver.secretKey);

// We should get the same plainText!
if (plainBuffer.toString() == plainText) {
    console.log("Message decrypted correctly");
}

As you can see the high level API implementation is easier to use, but the low level API will feel just right for those experienced with the C version of lib sodium. It also allows you to bypass any bugs in the high level APIs.

You can find this code sample in examples\low-level-api.js.

Documentation

Please read the work in progress documentation found under docs/.

You should also review the unit tests as most of the high level API is "documented" there. Don't forget to check out the examples as well.

The low level libsodium API documentation is now complete. All ported functions have been documented in low-level-api.md with code examples.

Please be patient as I document the rest of the APIs, or better still: help out! :)

Lib Sodium Documentation

Lib Sodium is documented here. Node-Sodium follows the same structure and I will keep documenting it as fast as possible.

Install

Tested on Mac, Linux and IllumOS Systems

npm install sodium

node-sodium depends on lib sodium, so if lib sodium does not compile on your platform chances are npm install sodium will fail.

Manual Build

Node Sodium includes the source of libsodium, so the normal install will try to compile libsodium directly from source, using libsodium's own build tools. This is the prefered method of compiling node sodium. If you can't compile libsodium from source in your platform you can download a pre-compiled binary and copy it to the ./deps/build/lib folder.

Before you run the manual build you must run the npm install once to install the required dependencies, like node-gyp that are needed to compile node-sodium. Please note that npm install will install the dependencies and compile node-sodium as well. After this initial step you can make changes to the source and run the following commands to manually build the module:

make sodium

SECURITY WARNING: Using a Binary Static libsodium

Node Sodium is a strong encryption library, odds are that a lot of security functions of your application depend on it, so DO NOT use binary libsodium distributions that you haven't verified. If you use a pre-compiled version of libsodium you MUST be sure that nothing mallicious was added to the compiled version you are using.

Code Samples

Please check the fully documented code samples in test/test_sodium.js.

Installing Mocha Test Suite

To run the unit tests you need Mocha. If you'd like to run coverage reports you need mocha-istanbul. You can install both globally by doing

npm install -g mocha mocha-istanbul

You may need to run it with sudo as only the root user has access to Node.js global directories

sudo npm install -g mocha mocha-istanbul

Unit Tests

You need to have mocha test suite installed globally then you can run the node-sodium unit tests by

make test

Coverage Reports

You need to have mocha and mocha-istanbul installed globally then you can run the node-sodium coverage reports by

make test-cov

License

This software is licensed through the MIT License. Please read the LICENSE file for more details.

Author

Built and maintained by Pedro Paixao