Error: sasl: scram-server-first-message: client password must be a string

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Explanation of “sasl: scram-server-first-message: client password must be a string” error

This error typically occurs when using the Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) mechanism with the SCRAM (Salted Challenge Response Authentication Mechanism) protocol. The error message indicates that the client password provided is not in the correct format.

In SCRAM, the client password should be a string. It should not be null, undefined, or any other non-string value. The password is used during the authentication process to generate and validate cryptographic hashes. If the password is not provided as a string, the authentication process fails with the mentioned error.

Example:

      
const username = 'myUsername';
const password = null; // Incorrect - password should be a string

const options = {
   mechanism: 'SCRAM-SHA-256',
   client: {
      username,
      password
   }
};

// Example usage with a MongoDB connection
const MongoClient = require('mongodb').MongoClient;
const uri = 'mongodb+srv://:@/?retryWrites=true&w=majority';

MongoClient.connect(uri, options, (err, client) => {
   // Handle connection and authentication errors here
});

In the example above, the password variable is assigned null, which is incorrect. It should be a string containing the actual password. To resolve the error, ensure that the client password is provided as a string during authentication attempts.

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