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name: secure-auth description: Secure authentication patterns (OWASP, NIST). Use for login, registration, password reset, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys.

Secure authentication

Step 0: Research the current security landscape (do this first)

Security knowledge ages on a 6-12 month half-life. The recipes below were last verified on 2026-05-08; they may be stale by the time you read this. Before applying any pattern in this skill, fan out research scoped to the authentication primitive being implemented (passwords, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys) so the recipes are interpreted against current authoritative sources, not against this file's snapshot.

Default-on, with a documented skip

Run the 4-angle research below by default. Skip ONLY when ALL of these hold:

• (a) You ran this same skill on this same primitive within the last 4 hours of the current session,
• (b) That prior research surfaced no urgent advisories for the authentication primitive being implemented (passwords, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys),
• (c) You log a one-line Research skipped because <reason> note in your response.

"I think I know" / "moving fast" / "user wants this done quickly" / "already familiar" are NOT valid skip reasons. The whole point of this preamble is that future-you should not trust this skill body's defaults until current state is checked.

Fan out 4 subagents in parallel

Each subagent returns at most 300 words of bullets with citations. Dispatch all 4 in a single message so they run concurrently.

Angle 1, Authoritative standards. Have NIST / OWASP / IETF (RFCs and Internet-Drafts) / W3C / CISA published anything new about the authentication primitive being implemented (passwords, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys) in the last 6-12 months? Look for: spec finalizations, deprecations, replacement specs, RFC publications, draft revisions, NIST SP updates, OWASP project version bumps. Cite by document number plus publication date.

Angle 2, Active exploitation. What's actively being exploited that targets the authentication primitive being implemented (passwords, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys)? Pull from: CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog (filter to last 6-12 months), recent CVE / GHSA entries with high CVSS or in-the-wild exploitation, breach postmortems and incident reports (CSRB, vendor RCAs, security-vendor research). Surface CWE patterns dominating recent KEV adds. Cite by CVE number plus advisory URL.

Angle 3, Tooling and library state. Are the libraries this skill recommends still current? What are the latest major versions in the relevant package registry (npm / PyPI / RubyGems / crates.io)? Have any been deprecated, replaced, or merged into another project? Have any flipped a secure default? Look up current versions in: registry.npmjs.org, pypi.org, rubygems.org, crates.io, pkg.go.dev. Cite by package plus version plus release date.

Angle 4, Practitioner discourse. What are practitioners and security teams talking about in the last 6 months? Pull from: OWASP Cheat Sheet Series (last-modified date matters), GitHub Security Lab posts, vendor security blogs (Cloudflare, Fastly, Snyk, Datadog, Wiz, GitGuardian), conference talks (Black Hat, DEF CON, OWASP Global AppSec, USENIX Security), SANS ISC, Krebs, recent OWASP project re-releases. Surface the patterns being adopted and the anti-patterns being called out. Cite by post URL plus author plus date.

Synthesize before applying recipes

After the 4 returns land, write a 1-paragraph "current state for the authentication primitive being implemented (passwords, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys), as of <today's date>" that names:

• The current normative ceiling (what specs say SHOULD be the default in 2026).
• 1-2 active threats specific to the authentication primitive being implemented (passwords, sessions, JWT, OAuth, MFA, passkeys) from the last 6-12 months.
• Any tooling drift (deprecated lib, new default in a framework, package merged or replaced).
• Any practitioner consensus shift visible in recent cheat sheet / blog updates.

If the synthesis flags drift in this skill body's recipes (e.g., a spec finalized after 2026-05-08, a library now deprecated, a default flipped), call that out explicitly in your response and override the skill body where they conflict. The synthesis wins. The skill body is scaffolding, not scripture.

When you cannot run subagents

If subagents are not available in your runtime, the same shape applies in-line: do 4 sequential targeted searches (web search for standards, KEV catalog lookup, package registry version checks, recent cheat-sheet diff). Land the same 1-paragraph synthesis. Cost goes up; the protection does not change.

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Production-ready authentication patterns. These aren't the simplest implementations, they're the ones that won't get you sued.

Authentication architecture decision

The 2020-era "session vs JWT" frame is no longer the only axis. In 2026 the question is closer to "passkey plus short-lived bound tokens" vs "session cookie." Pick by deployment shape, not by what a tutorial used.

Sessions

Use sessions when:

• Server-rendered application
• Need immediate logout / revocation
• Single domain
• Simpler to implement correctly

JWTs (with refresh tokens)

Use JWTs when:

• Multiple services need to verify auth
• Stateless verification preferred (with revocation strategy)
• Mobile app plus API
• Third-party integrations
• High-value APIs benefit from sender-constrained tokens (DPoP per RFC 9449, mTLS per RFC 8705)

Passkeys-first

Use passkeys (WebAuthn / FIDO2) as the primary factor when:

• The user agent supports WebAuthn (every current Chromium, Firefox, Safari, and major mobile browser does)
• You can run alongside passwords during transition (offer passkey enrollment after first login, keep password as fallback while user installs)
• Phishing resistance is required (NIST AAL3, government, financial, medical)

The passkey-first stance reflects 2026 consensus: WebAuthn L3 reached W3C Candidate Recommendation Snapshot 2026-01-13 (https://www.w3.org/TR/webauthn-3/) and CTAP 2.3 became a FIDO Alliance Proposed Standard 2026-02-26. See the Passkeys / WebAuthn section below.

Common mistake: Using JWTs because a tutorial did, then storing them in localStorage (XSS-vulnerable) and having no revocation strategy. Refresh-token reuse detection and full token validation (issuer, audience, scope, signing-key tenancy) are non-optional in 2026, see the Storm-0558 lesson.

Password storage

The single source of truth for password hashing across this skill. The Session and JWT examples below assume these defaults.

Default: argon2id

OWASP Password Storage Cheat Sheet (last updated 2026-05-07, https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Password_Storage_Cheat_Sheet.html) lists any of 5 equivalent argon2id profiles. Pick whichever fits your server's memory budget; they're calibrated to similar work factors:

• m=47104 KiB (46 MiB), t=1, p=1
• m=19456 KiB (19 MiB), t=2, p=1
• m=12288 KiB (12 MiB), t=3, p=1
• m=9216 KiB (9 MiB), t=4, p=1
• m=7168 KiB (7 MiB), t=5, p=1

// Node, argon2 package (current 0.44.0; pre-1.0, pin by minor)
const argon2 = require('argon2');

const hash = await argon2.hash(password, {
  type: argon2.argon2id,
  memoryCost: 19456, // KiB, one of the 5 OWASP-equivalent profiles
  timeCost: 2,
  parallelism: 1
});

// Verify
const valid = await argon2.verify(hash, password);

# Python, argon2-cffi
from argon2 import PasswordHasher
from argon2.exceptions import VerifyMismatchError

ph = PasswordHasher(
    memory_cost=19456,  # KiB
    time_cost=2,
    parallelism=1,
)

hashed = ph.hash(password)

try:
    ph.verify(hashed, password)
except VerifyMismatchError:
    # invalid password
    pass

RFC 9106 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9106/) defines a more aggressive "FIRST RECOMMENDED" profile (t=1, p=4, m=2 GiB) intended for server environments with that memory available; OWASP's 5 profiles are the practical floor.

Alternate: bcrypt

Still acceptable. OWASP says cost 10 minimum, "as large as performance allows." The current code uses cost 12, which is fine, just know the floor moved.

// Node, bcrypt (current 6.0.0)
const bcrypt = require('bcrypt');

// bcrypt has a 72-byte input limit. Pre-hash with SHA-256
// when accepting longer passphrases, OR reject inputs over 72 bytes.
const crypto = require('crypto');

function safeBcryptInput(password) {
  const bytes = Buffer.byteLength(password, 'utf8');
  if (bytes > 72) {
    // Pre-hash to a fixed 32-byte digest, base64-encoded (44 ASCII bytes)
    return crypto.createHash('sha256').update(password).digest('base64');
  }
  return password;
}

const hashed = await bcrypt.hash(safeBcryptInput(password), 12);
const ok = await bcrypt.compare(safeBcryptInput(password), hashed);

Alternate: scrypt

Acceptable. OWASP minimum is N=2^17, r=8, p=1.

PBKDF2: only when FIPS-140 required

PBKDF2 is the algorithm to use when FIPS-140 compliance is a hard requirement. Otherwise prefer argon2id. OWASP minimum: 600,000 iterations of PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, or 210,000 of PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512.

Never

• The OS shell-execution primitive composing a password into a command line, pass via stdin or argv.
• Plain-text storage. No exceptions, no "just for now," no "we'll fix it before launch."
• Logging the plain-text password in any code path, including error handlers.
• A custom hashing scheme. Roll-your-own is the most common breach precondition.

Password policy (NIST SP 800-63B-4)

NIST SP 800-63B-4 went FINAL 2025-07-31 (https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/63/b/4/final). The old 800-63B was withdrawn 2025-08-01. The values below are normative. Don't deviate.

Length

• Single-factor passwords: 15-character minimum.
• Multi-factor passwords (one factor among several): 8-character minimum.
• Maximum: at least 64 characters (verifier MUST allow up to 64; it MAY allow longer).

Composition

• No composition rules. NIST 800-63B-4 §5.1.1 explicitly: "Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT impose other composition rules" (no "must contain uppercase / digit / symbol").
• Allow Unicode. Each Unicode code point counts as one character.
• Allow paste. Password managers depend on it.

Rotation

• No periodic rotation. Don't force "change every 90 days." Rotate only on evidence of compromise.

Blocklist (mandatory in 2026)

The verifier MUST check candidate passwords against a list of known-compromised values. Use the HaveIBeenPwned k-anonymity API (https://haveibeenpwned.com/API/v3#PwnedPasswords), you submit the first 5 chars of a SHA-1 hash, get back the suffixes that match, never send the password itself.

// Check candidate password against HIBP
const crypto = require('crypto');

async function isPwned(password) {
  const sha1 = crypto.createHash('sha1').update(password).digest('hex').toUpperCase();
  const prefix = sha1.slice(0, 5);
  const suffix = sha1.slice(5);

  const res = await fetch(`https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/${prefix}`, {
    headers: { 'Add-Padding': 'true' }
  });
  if (!res.ok) {
    // Fail closed on availability blip? Up to your threat model.
    // Default: don't block registration if HIBP is down; log and proceed.
    return false;
  }
  const body = await res.text();
  return body.split('\n').some(line => line.startsWith(suffix));
}

Phishing resistance

NIST 800-63B-4 REQUIRES phishing resistance at AAL3. Passwords alone never reach AAL3. AAL2 with phishing resistance is what most consumer apps should target now, that means WebAuthn (passkey) or PIV/CAC, not TOTP and not SMS.

Session-based authentication

Complete Express.js implementation

const express = require('express');
const session = require('express-session');
const RedisStore = require('connect-redis').d