What is Bycrypt?
Bcrypt is a hashing algorithm based on the Blowfish Cypher. It takes a plain text password as input and outputs a hash of that password as a string. Hashing is a one-way function, which means that even if someone knows the key, they won’t be able to obtain the plaintext password. As a result, an attacker is forced to use brute force assaults to guess the password.
Blowfish is the first symmetric encryption algorithm created by Bruce Schneier in 1993. Symmetric encryption uses a single encryption key to both encrypt and decrypt data. The sensitive data and the symmetric encryption key are utilized within the encryption algorithm to turn the sensitive data into ciphertext.
It is also a popular npm package for nodejs projects. You will see many tutorials on youtube using bycrypt for hashing their project. That is why it is not surprising to see many developers use bycrypt as their method to hash passwords.
It is still relevant to this day but installing bycrypt package in npm might not work due to compatibility issues in nodejs version. If you encounter this kind of when installing:
gyp ERR! stack Error: "pre" versions of node cannot be installed, use the --nodedir flag instead
You might check this solution to be able to use bycrypt in your project.
Solutions
First is to check your nodejs version. Bycrypt uses node-gyp, node-gyp only works with node versions that are stable and released. Because the bcrypt module is built and installed using node-gyp, you’ll need a stable version of node to use it.
Based on the documentation, here are the version compatibility of Nodejs to Bycrypt
If the error did not solve, you may want to use an alternative package the same function as bycrypt
Here are the list of bycrypt packages and the link:
bycrypt.js
– https://www.npmjs.com/package/bcryptjs
– npm install bycryptjs
simplecrypt
– https://www.npmjs.com/package/simplecrypt
– npm install simplecrypt
Reference
https://www.npmjs.com/package/bcrypt
https://findwords.info/term/bcrypt
https://heynode.com/blog/2020-04/salt-and-hash-passwords-bcrypt/