Cryptography best practices for password storage in Node

Question

I'm looking for a straightforward, secure, solution for storing a user's password using Node. I'm a cryptography novice, but have been trying to piece a solution together from researching online. I'm looking for validation that what I came up with is a solid solution for a web app with basic (not a bank, hospital, etc) security needs. Here it is:

var crypto = require('crypto');
var SALT_LENGTH = 64;
var KEY_LENGTH = 64;
var ITERATIONS = 1000;

function createHashedPassword(plainTextPassword, cb) {
    crypto.randomBytes(SALT_LENGTH, function (err, salt) {
        console.time('password-hash');
        crypto.pbkdf2(plainTextPassword, salt, ITERATIONS, KEY_LENGTH, function (err, derivedKey) {
            console.timeEnd('password-hash');
            return cb(null, {derivedKey: derivedKey, salt: salt, iterations: ITERATIONS});
        });
    });
};

...and here are the choices I made that brought me to this point:

What hashing algorithm to use?

Based on this widely referenced article, it looks like the leading contenders are PBKDF2, bcrypt, and scrypt. I chose PBKDF2 because it has built in support in Node.

What salt size to use?

This stack overflow answer seemed to be the most straightforward answer I could find. I'm still not very clear on why 64 bytes is the right salt size though. When I google around, I get other stack exchange answers like this, but I'm not sure it applies to the Node algorithm? Totally confused here, an explanation aimed at a novice using this Node function would be awesome.

What key length to use?

Once again, I largely based my choice off the same answer as above, but I'm just as foggy on the basics of 'why'. The answer says that 'it's a waste to generate keys smaller than your input, so use at least 64 bytes'. Huh? Once again, a practical explanation would be helpful.

How many iterations to use?

For this question, I based my choice off this stack exchange answer. I don't understand much of it, but I did get that the algorithm is supposed to take approximately 8ms. So, as you can see I put timers on the function, and I adjusted my iterations to get it in that ballpark on my machine.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The NPM package credential handles all of these

You can see the author's write up on it in the book Programming Javascript Applications

Answer 2

I would strongly recommend using BCrypt. There are lots of advantages to the algorithm, and most implementations handle all of these questions for you.

As described in this answer:

Bcrypt has the best kind of repute that can be achieved for a cryptographic algorithm: it has been around for quite some time, used quite widely, "attracted attention", and yet remains unbroken to date.

I've written up a detailed article about how to implement BCrypt in node/express as well as other frameworks here: http://davismj.me/blog/bcrypt