Cookie-signature is a lightweight npm package designed for securely signing and unsigning cookie values in Node.js applications, ensuring data integrity and preventing tampering. Version 1.0.3 represents a minor iteration over the previous stable version 1.0.2, both maintaining the core functionality of signing and unsigning cookies without introducing any new dependencies.
The primary differences lie within potential bug fixes, performance tweaks or very minor code adjustments that don't fundamentally alter the API or functionality. Developers using either version can expect the same core experience: simple methods to sign cookie values, creating a hash based on a secret key, and verify those signatures to identify modified cookies.
For developers, the library provides a simple way to protect cookie information from client-side manipulation, useful for session management, tracking user preferences, or storing other sensitive data within cookies. The use of a secret key during signing ensures that only the server with the correct key can validate the cookie's content. The package's small size and lack of external dependencies make it a lean and efficient choice for Node.js projects prioritizing security in cookie handling. While 1.0.3 likely contains improvements, both versions offer a stable foundation for cookie signing needs.
All the vulnerabilities related to the version 1.0.3 of the package
cookie-signature Timing Attack
Affected versions of cookie-signature are vulnerable to timing attacks as a result of using a fail-early comparison instead of a constant-time comparison.
Timing attacks remove the exponential increase in entropy gained from increased secret length, by providing per-character feedback on the correctness of a guess via miniscule timing differences.
Under favorable network conditions, an attacker can exploit this to guess the secret in no more than charset*length guesses, instead of charset^length guesses required were the timing attack not present.
Update to 1.0.4 or later.
