Conversation

mcc
@mcclure111
Hey Javascript people. Let's say I'm sitting here and going "I need to sign a binary blob then later verify that signature... I know, I'll use SubtleCrypto.sign". Do you feel a need to fling my laptop aside and yell "NO! You fool!! Use ____ from NPM!!" instead?
4
10
Daniel Micay
@DanielMicay
Replying to
@mcclure111
SubtleCrypto is named that way to discourage using it directly because it provides low-level APIs not designed for direct use outside cryptography libraries. It's probably not a good idea to use this directly if you aren't an expert on cryptography making a higher-level library.
1
2
Daniel Micay
@DanielMicay
Replying to
@DanielMicay
and
@mcclure111
Do you only need signing and verification, or do you really need authenticated encryption? Do you need public/private keys, or is it the same instance of the code handling both encryption/signing and verification/decryption?
1
mcc
@mcclure111
Replying to
@DanielMicay
I need public/private keys, and I need signing. Data blobs are being distributed by way of untrusted third parties. I may or may not need encryption. I guess it would be nice to offer it as an option as long as I'm signing and public keys are being distributed anyway out of band
1
Daniel Micay
@DanielMicay
Replying to
@mcclure111
I recommend using npmjs.com/package/libsod. Web Cryptography provides unsafe, low-level APIs and was designed by Netflix to implement DRM rather than anything useful. The only real use case is inside higher-level cryptography libraries with a need to provide legacy algorithms.
npmjs.com
npm: libsodium-wrappers
The Sodium cryptographic library compiled to pure JavaScript (wrappers). Latest version: 0.7.10, last published: 6 months ago. Start using libsodium-wrappers in your project by running `npm i...
2
3
mcc
@mcclure111
Replying to
@DanielMicay
Thanks. This is reassuring because what I was planning on doing was using TweetNacl, a js port of libsodium. SubtleCrypto seems maybe workable but there are just too many tunable knobs I don't trust myself to tune.
1