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Chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client

Chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client est une leçon MongoDB Academy gratuite sur CoddyKit. Ceci est la leçon 4 sur 4. Tu peux lire la leçon complète ci-dessous gratuitement — puis la pratiquer en direct dans le navigateur avec un éditeur de code intégré et un tuteur IA 24/7. Elle fait partie du parcours d'apprentissage MongoDB Academy, et ta progression se synchronise sur le web et l'application CoddyKit. Le cours MongoDB Academy comprend 4 leçons au total.

Certaines parties de cette leçon n'ont pas encore été traduites et s'affichent en anglais.

Why Field-Level Encryption?

Even with TLS and encryption at rest, the MongoDB server sees plaintext data once it is decrypted from disk. A compromised DBA account, a rogue cloud engineer with disk access, or a database backup leak could expose sensitive fields. Client-Side Field Level Encryption (CSFLE) solves this by encrypting individual sensitive fields — like SSNs, credit card numbers, or health data — inside the client driver, before the data ever reaches the server. The server only ever stores ciphertext.

How CSFLE Works at a High Level

CSFLE uses two layers of keys. The Customer Master Key (CMK) is stored in an external Key Management System (AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, GCP KMS, or a local key). The CMK encrypts a Data Encryption Key (DEK), which is stored in a MongoDB collection called the Key Vault. The driver fetches and decrypts the DEK using the CMK at query time, then uses the DEK to encrypt/decrypt individual field values. The server never sees the CMK or the DEK in plaintext.

Two Modes: Automatic and Explicit

CSFLE offers two encryption modes. Automatic CSFLE (requires MongoDB Enterprise or Atlas) encrypts and decrypts fields transparently based on a JSON schema — your application code does not change. Explicit (Manual) CSFLE is available in the Community driver and requires the application to call encrypt/decrypt methods explicitly. Automatic is far more convenient for new projects; explicit gives maximum control over which fields are encrypted per operation.

Setting Up the Key Vault Collection

Before encrypting any data, create a Key Vault collection — a special MongoDB collection that stores Data Encryption Keys. The key vault is just a regular collection (e.g., encryption.__keyVault) but it must have a unique index on the keyAltNames field. DEKs are stored as BSON documents with the key material encrypted by your CMK — even the key vault only stores ciphertext.

const { MongoClient, ClientEncryption } = require('mongodb-client-encryption')

// Step 1: Create key vault collection with unique index
const client = new MongoClient('mongodb://localhost:27017')
await client.connect()

const keyVaultColl = client.db('encryption').collection('__keyVault')
await keyVaultColl.createIndex(
  { keyAltNames: 1 },
  { unique: true, partialFilterExpression: { keyAltNames: { $exists: true } } }
)

Creating a Data Encryption Key

Use the ClientEncryption helper to create a DEK. The key is encrypted by your CMK (here a local master key for development) and stored in the key vault. In production, replace the local provider with aws, azure, or gcp and provide the KMS credentials. You can create multiple DEKs — for example, one per tenant in a multi-tenant application.

const crypto = require('crypto')

// 96-byte local master key (development only — use KMS in production)
const localMasterKey = crypto.randomBytes(96)

const encryption = new ClientEncryption(client, {
  keyVaultNamespace: 'encryption.__keyVault',
  kmsProviders: { local: { key: localMasterKey } }
})

// Create a DEK with an alias for easy reference
const dataKey = await encryption.createDataKey('local', {
  keyAltNames: ['userSensitiveDataKey']
})
console.log('DEK id:', dataKey)

Defining the Encrypted Fields Schema

For automatic CSFLE, define an encrypted fields map that tells the driver which fields to encrypt and with which algorithm. AEAD_AES_256_CBC_HMAC_SHA_512-Deterministic produces the same ciphertext for the same plaintext — enabling equality queries on encrypted fields. AEAD_AES_256_CBC_HMAC_SHA_512-Random produces different ciphertext each time — stronger but not queryable.

const encryptedFieldsMap = {
  'myApp.users': {
    fields: [
      {
        path: 'ssn',
        bsonType: 'string',
        // Deterministic: can query encrypted SSN with equality
        algorithm: 'AEAD_AES_256_CBC_HMAC_SHA_512-Deterministic',
        keyId: dataKey
      },
      {
        path: 'creditCardNumber',
        bsonType: 'string',
        // Random: cannot query, but stronger encryption
        algorithm: 'AEAD_AES_256_CBC_HMAC_SHA_512-Random',
        keyId: dataKey
      }
    ]
  }
}

Creating an Auto-CSFLE MongoClient

To enable automatic CSFLE, configure the MongoClient with the autoEncryption option, providing the key vault namespace, KMS credentials, and the encrypted fields map. The driver will automatically encrypt matching fields on insert/update and decrypt them on read. No changes to your application queries are required.

const secureClient = new MongoClient('mongodb://localhost:27017', {
  autoEncryption: {
    keyVaultNamespace: 'encryption.__keyVault',
    kmsProviders: { local: { key: localMasterKey } },
    encryptedFieldsMap: encryptedFieldsMap
  }
})

await secureClient.connect()
const users = secureClient.db('myApp').collection('users')

// SSN and creditCardNumber are auto-encrypted on insert
await users.insertOne({
  name: 'Alice',
  ssn: '123-45-6789',           // encrypted transparently
  creditCardNumber: '4111-1111-1111-1111'  // encrypted transparently
})

Querying Encrypted Fields

With deterministic encryption, you can perform equality queries on encrypted fields — the driver encrypts the query value with the same DEK before sending it to the server, so the server compares ciphertexts. With random encryption, equality queries are not possible because the same plaintext produces different ciphertexts each time. Range and regex queries are not supported on encrypted fields in CSFLE.

// Query an encrypted SSN field (deterministic encryption)
// The driver auto-encrypts '123-45-6789' before sending the query
const user = await users.findOne({ ssn: '123-45-6789' })

// The result has SSN decrypted automatically by the driver:
console.log(user.ssn)  // '123-45-6789' (decrypted)

// A client WITHOUT the key sees ciphertext:
// user.ssn = Binary(Buffer.from('...'), 6)  // encrypted blob

Explicit Encryption With the Driver API

Explicit CSFLE gives you per-operation control. Call encryption.encrypt() before inserting and encryption.decrypt() after reading. This works in Community edition drivers without requiring the automatic CSFLE shared library. It is more verbose but gives complete flexibility — you can encrypt different fields in different documents with different DEKs.

// Explicit encryption
const encryptedSsn = await encryption.encrypt('123-45-6789', {
  algorithm: 'AEAD_AES_256_CBC_HMAC_SHA_512-Deterministic',
  keyAltName: 'userSensitiveDataKey'
})

await users.insertOne({
  name: 'Bob',
  ssn: encryptedSsn  // manually encrypted Binary value
})

// Explicit decryption
const doc = await users.findOne({ name: 'Bob' })
const decryptedSsn = await encryption.decrypt(doc.ssn)
console.log(decryptedSsn)  // '123-45-6789'

Key Rotation for Field-Level Encryption

Rotate DEKs periodically to limit the exposure window if a key is compromised. Key rotation in CSFLE involves creating a new DEK, re-encrypting all documents that use the old DEK (field by field), and then deleting the old DEK from the key vault. This process can be done as a background migration script without downtime. Rotating CMKs in KMS (wrapping the DEK) does not require touching the encrypted documents at all.

CSFLE Limitations and Considerations

CSFLE has important limitations to plan for: no server-side operations on encrypted fields (aggregation, sorting, and range queries on encrypted fields are not supported, except equality on deterministic fields); schema changes require DEK re-use or re-encryption; automatic CSFLE requires MongoDB Enterprise or Atlas; and performance overhead from encryption/decryption in the driver adds latency. Design your data model to minimise which fields need encryption.

Quick Check

Test your understanding of MongoDB & NoSQL Databases concepts from this lesson.

Lesson Recap

In this lesson you learned: CSFLE encrypts sensitive fields inside the driver before data reaches the server, so even MongoDB itself only sees ciphertext, deterministic encryption enables equality queries while random encryption provides stronger security without queryability, and the two-tier key model (CMK in KMS wrapping DEK in key vault) keeps encryption keys outside MongoDB. Next up we explore MongoDB schema design patterns.

Questions Fréquemment Posées

La leçon « Chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client » est-elle gratuite ?

Oui — le texte complet de « Chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client » est gratuit à lire ici sur le web. Pour la pratiquer de manière interactive (un éditeur de code intégré et un tuteur IA 24/7) et déverrouiller le reste du cours MongoDB Academy, passe à CoddyKit PRO. Le cours MongoDB Academy comprend 4 leçons au total.

Qu'est-ce que j'apprendrai dans « Chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client » ?

Les apprenants configureront le chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client de MongoDB afin de chiffrer les champs sensibles individuellement avant qu’ils ne quittent l’application, et d’empêcher le… Tu pratiques MongoDB Academy avec du code pratique que tu exécutes directement dans le navigateur, et un tuteur IA 24/7 répond à tes questions au fur et à mesure que tu avances dans la leçon.

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Toutes les leçons de ce cours

Mécanismes d’authentification : SCRAM et x.509
Contrôle d’accès basé sur les rôles : rôles intégrés et personnalisés
Chiffrement au repos et TLS en transit
Chiffrement au niveau des champs côté client

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