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doc: emphasize that createCipher is never secure #44538

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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions doc/api/crypto.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -3013,6 +3013,10 @@ The `password` is used to derive the cipher key and initialization vector (IV).
The value must be either a `'latin1'` encoded string, a [`Buffer`][], a
`TypedArray`, or a `DataView`.

<strong class="critical">This function is semantically insecure for all
supported ciphers and fatally flawed for ciphers in counter mode (such as CTR,
GCM, or CCM).</strong>

The implementation of `crypto.createCipher()` derives keys using the OpenSSL
function [`EVP_BytesToKey`][] with the digest algorithm set to MD5, one
iteration, and no salt. The lack of salt allows dictionary attacks as the same
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -3136,6 +3140,10 @@ cipher in CCM or OCB mode (e.g. `'aes-128-ccm'`) is used. In that case, the
authentication tag in bytes, see [CCM mode][].
For `chacha20-poly1305`, the `authTagLength` option defaults to 16 bytes.

<strong class="critical">This function is semantically insecure for all
supported ciphers and fatally flawed for ciphers in counter mode (such as CTR,
GCM, or CCM).</strong>

The implementation of `crypto.createDecipher()` derives keys using the OpenSSL
function [`EVP_BytesToKey`][] with the digest algorithm set to MD5, one
iteration, and no salt. The lack of salt allows dictionary attacks as the same
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4 changes: 2 additions & 2 deletions doc/api/deprecations.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2114,10 +2114,10 @@ changes:

Type: Runtime

Using [`crypto.createCipher()`][] and [`crypto.createDecipher()`][] should be
Using [`crypto.createCipher()`][] and [`crypto.createDecipher()`][] must be
avoided as they use a weak key derivation function (MD5 with no salt) and static
initialization vectors. It is recommended to derive a key using
[`crypto.pbkdf2()`][] or [`crypto.scrypt()`][] and to use
[`crypto.pbkdf2()`][] or [`crypto.scrypt()`][] with random salts and to use
[`crypto.createCipheriv()`][] and [`crypto.createDecipheriv()`][] to obtain the
[`Cipher`][] and [`Decipher`][] objects respectively.

Expand Down