Recommended Crypto Security Setup (Implemented Algorithms)?

Question

Firstly I'm not a crypto expert, however I know how to use algorithms that other people have defined before in practical usages, that is, as long as they live up to their promises.

The thing is that I need certain utilities:

1. Generate Public/Private Key pair of x length, get them as binary; and be able to process content with it.
2. Some hashing algorithm that consumes a lot of memory and takes its time; I don't need speed, I need safety. (I'm pretty sure they'll use dumb passwords)
3. An symmetric encryption algorithm that generates ciphertext based on a password (hash) that must be quite strong as well.

My current answers have been:

1. OpenSSL RSA algorithms.
2. Scrypt (thinking about changing to argon2 due to great documentation and wrappers)
3. OpenSSL AES CBC

But then you go here and there on the internet and they say that, scrypt is broken, use bcrypt, no argon2 https://github.com/P-H-C/phc-winner-argon2 is the new thing, OpenSSL has security bugs, better use LibreSSL, no use libsodium. etc... etc...

So what'd the best options be?... I need to secure highly sensitive data.

Also I'll probably be using Node.js wrappers because I need results fast, as I need to make a demonstration.

Answer 1

One of the biggest issues that you face is not the algorithms you choose, but how you implement using them. There are many good algorithms for various purposes, and virtually any of them, improperly applied, can result in a disastrously broken cryptosystem.

This is one of the reasons people offer advice like "use libsodium" because libraries like libsodium abstract most of the decisions that you might get wrong.

However, to answer the question that you asked specifically, regarding algorithms:

1. Asymmetric encryption: User RSA-OAEP.

2. Password hashing algorithm or KBKDF for symmetric encryption: Use bcrypt.

3. Symmetric encryption: An AEAD cipher. I know OpenSSL has AES-GCM. You might also find ChaCha20-Poly1305. Or you could use libsodium.

One specific point to reiterate about item 3...Don't use the password directly as the key. Use bcrypt (or another suitable KBKDF) to generate a proper key, in a properly slow manner. You may already know this, but it's worth pointing out for future readers.

Another critical point - Even with all of the best algorithms, and the proper implementation, key management is a crucial component of the system. If you don't think hard enough about secure key storage and management, everything else could be for naught.