What are the security mechanisms available in Node.js?

 We can secure our Node.js application in the following ways:

Authentication — Authentication is one of the primary security stages at which user is identified as permitted to access the application at all. Authentication verifies the user’s identity through one or several checks. In Node.js, authentication can be either session-based or token-based. In session-based authentication, the user’s credentials are compared to the user account stored on the server and, in the event of successful validation, a session is started for the user. Whenever the session expires, the user needs to log in again. In token-based authentication, the user’s credentials are applied to generate a string called a token which is then associated with the user’s requests to the server.

Error Handling — Usually, the error message contains the explanation of what’s actually gone wrong for the user to understand the reason. At the same time, when the error is related to the application code syntax, it can be set to display the entire log content on the frontend. For an experienced hacker, the log content can reveal a lot of sensitive internal information about the application code structure and tools used within the software.

Request Validation — Another aspect which has to be considered, while building a secure Node.js application, is a validation of requests or, in other words, a check of the incoming data for possible inconsistencies. It may seem that invalid requests do not directly affect the security of a Node.js application, however, they may influence its performance and robustness. Validating the incoming data types and formats and rejecting requests not conforming to the set rules can be an additional measure of securing your Node.js application.

Node.js Security Tools and Best Practices — We can use tools like helmet (protects our application by setting HTTP headers), csurf (validates tokens in incoming requests and rejects the invalid ones), node rate limiter (controls the rate of repeated requests. This function can protect you from brute force attacks) and cors (enables cross-origin resource sharing).

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