React E2EE

An end-to-end encryption package that is basically a wrapper package of SubtleCrypto library for browsers. See MDN.

Installation

Use the package manager npm to install react-e2ee.

npm install @chatereum/react-e2ee

Run test cases

npm run test

What's New? 🔥

Changelogs v3.0.0

• encrypt, decrypt, encryptFile and decryptFile functions are now deprecated. However, you can still use these functions.
• added encryptPlaintext, decryptForPlaintext, encryptFileBuffer and decryptFileBuffer functions to replace corresponding deprecated functions. These functions will be improved in terms of performance and better error handling in future releases.
• added test cases using jest
• added better typescript documentation and intellisense

Usage

General usage

import E2EE from '@chatereum/react-e2ee';

//generates a RSA-OAEP private key and public key in PEM format
const keys = await E2EE.getKeys();
/*
would return something like:
{
    private_key : "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----...", //PEM
    public_key : "-------BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----...." //PEM
}
*/

//encrypts any string format message
//if you want to encrypt a format other than string, convert it into string first
const message = "Made with 💙 by Arjis Chakraborty";
const encrypted = await E2EE.encryptPlaintext({
    public_key: keys.public_key, 
    plain_text: message,
});
/*
would return something like:
{
    cipher_text: /hfan3ulskxzkjr20mckmicurj38rmdkalclalor\dj3*, //base64
    aes_key: 9r2hnankal92/*gawaoaowrj38jma/daun, //base64
    iv: 1hnfkalmnfinfkeif874fsf&bbdajwk9dkacam //base64
}

you can now wire this entire object to the recipient through eg: WebSockets
*/

//on the receiver's end
//decrypting an encrypted message
const decrypted = await E2EE.decryptForPlaintext({
    encrypted_text: encrypted, 
    private_key: keys.private_key,
});
/*
would return the original message:
decrypted = "Made with 💙 by Arjis Chakraborty"

you can now show this message on the recipient's frontend
*/

End-to-end encrypting files

import E2EE from '@chatereum/react-e2ee';

//encrypts any buffer format file
const file_buffer = new ArrayBuffer(16); //this should be the file in buffer format
const encrypted = await E2EE.encryptFileBuffer({
    public_key: keys.public_key,
    file_buffer,
});
/*
would return something like:
{
    cipher_buffer: ArrayBuffer { byteLength: 16 }, //ArrayBuffer
    aes_key: 9r2hnankal92/*gawaoaowrj38jma/daun, //base64
    iv: 1hnfkalmnfinfkeif874fsf&bbdajwk9dkacam //base64
}

you can now wire this entire object to the recipient through eg: WebSockets
*/

//on the receiver's end
//decrypting an encrypted file
const decrypted = await E2EE.decryptFileBuffer({
    encrypted_buffer: encrypted,
    private_key: keys.private_key,
});
/*
would return the original message:
decrypted = ArrayBuffer { byteLength: 16 }

you can now use this ArrayBuffer to show maybe an image by converting it to a base64 data URL
*/

Note: If you are using deprecated functions in your code, check out the documentation for v2.0

How it works

• We generate a private and public RSA-OAEP keys using getKeys() function

• We get the raw string message that needs to be encrypted (usually referred to as plainText)

• We then call the encrypt() function to encrypt our plainText with the RSA public key of the recipient.

• Internally, a lot of things are going on in the encrypt() function.

  • We first encode the plainText using an encoder() function. Let's call this encoded.

  • Then we generate a Diffie-Hellman shared secret key using the AES-CBC cipher of length 256. This also requires a iv padding which is of type Uint8Array of size 16. Ultimately, we get an AES key back. Let's call this key AES and the iv padding as IV.

  • Now we take encoded and encrypt it using AES. This gives us back the encrypted plainText. Let's call this encrypted_text.

  • Now we use the public key of the recipient to encrypt the AES key. Let's call this encrypted_AES.

  • To finish the encryption process, we return an object containing encrypted_text, encrypted_AES and IV. We send back IV because we need this in decrypt().

• Now that we have our encrypted message, we can pass this entire object onto our server to further be passed on to the recipient client.

• On the recipient client, we call the decrypt() function.

• Again, internally, we have a lot of stuff going on:

  • The recipients takes its private key and tries to decrypt the encrypted_AES. Let's call this AES.

  • It then tries to use the AES key alongwith the IV to decrypt encrypted_text. Let's call this encoded_text.

  • Once we have our encoded_text, we need to decode this into human-readable format (UTF-8).

  • We run a text decoder function to decode the encoded_text.

  • Finally, we have our decoded, human-readable plainText.

• This plainText is what is displayed to the recipient's frontend.

• You can read more about End-to-end encryption here.

Prerequisites

These are some important requirements that you need to make sure before you can use this library:

❗ The website on which you intend to use this library must have a TLS or SSL certificate installed, i.e. it must have support for HTTPS. Alternatively, for testing purposes, you should access your site over localhost or else the library won't work.

❗ This library is strictly for browser based Node.js frameworks and specifically for React as the name already suggests.

❗ DO NOT ever share your private key over the "wire". You can only share your public key to the server side or even directly to your recipient client.

Good to know

💙 This library uses the SubtleCrypto library which is embedded in the browser. A down side to SubtleCrypto is that it can't run on an http connection that doesn't have any TLS or SSL certificates. However, localhost seems to be an exception. You can learn more about the library here.

💙 This library is primarily made for React and some other browser based Node.js frameworks but you can fork this repository and use the code on any browser based application you like that supports SubtleCrypto.

💙 I am working on a few examples to demonstrate the full working of this library. Until then, SubtleCrypto has a lot of documentation to offer.

Contributing

This repository is open to any contributions to make the library a hassle free solution to End-to-End Encryption in browsers.

Made with 💙 by Arjis Chakraborty