Documenso Security Basics

Overview

Essential security practices for Documenso integrations: API key management, webhook verification, document access control, and self-hosted signing certificate configuration.

Prerequisites

Documenso account with API access
Understanding of environment variables and secret management
Completed documenso-install-auth setup

Instructions

Step 1: API Key Security

// NEVER hardcode keys
const BAD = new Documenso({ apiKey: "api_abc123..." }); // Exposed in source

// ALWAYS use environment variables
const GOOD = new Documenso({ apiKey: process.env.DOCUMENSO_API_KEY! });

Key management rules:

Store in .env (never committed) or a secrets manager (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager)
Use team-scoped keys for team resources, personal keys for personal documents
Rotate keys on employee offboarding -- revoke in dashboard immediately
CI/CD: use masked/encrypted secrets (GitHub Secrets, GitLab CI variables)

# .gitignore — always include
.env
.env.*
!.env.example

Step 2: Key Rotation with Zero Downtime

// Support dual keys during rotation
function getApiKey(): string {
  // Try primary first, fall back to secondary during rotation
  return process.env.DOCUMENSO_API_KEY_PRIMARY
    ?? process.env.DOCUMENSO_API_KEY_SECONDARY
    ?? (() => { throw new Error("No Documenso API key configured"); })();
}

// Rotation procedure:
// 1. Generate new key in Documenso dashboard
// 2. Set as DOCUMENSO_API_KEY_SECONDARY, deploy
// 3. Verify secondary key works
// 4. Move secondary to PRIMARY, deploy
// 5. Revoke old key in dashboard

Step 3: Webhook Secret Verification

import { timingSafeEqual } from "crypto";

function verifyWebhookSecret(req: Request): boolean {
  const received = req.headers["x-documenso-secret"] as string;
  const expected = process.env.DOCUMENSO_WEBHOOK_SECRET!;

  if (!received || !expected) return false;

  // Use constant-time comparison to prevent timing attacks
  return timingSafeEqual(
    Buffer.from(received, "utf8"),
    Buffer.from(expected, "utf8")
  );
}

# Python equivalent
import hmac, os
from flask import request

def verify_webhook(req):
    received = req.headers.get("X-Documenso-Secret", "")
    expected = os.environ["DOCUMENSO_WEBHOOK_SECRET"]
    return hmac.compare_digest(received, expected)

Step 4: Document Access Control

// Principle of least privilege with API keys
// Personal keys: only YOUR documents
// Team keys: all documents in the team

// Restrict document access by checking ownership
async function getDocumentSecure(documentId: number, userId: string) {
  const doc = await client.documents.getV0(documentId);

  // Verify the requesting user is the owner or a recipient
  const isOwner = doc.userId === parseInt(userId);
  const isRecipient = doc.recipients?.some(r => r.email === userEmail);

  if (!isOwner && !isRecipient) {
    throw new Error("Access denied: not authorized for this document");
  }

  return doc;
}

Step 5: Signing Certificate Security (Self-Hosted)

Self-hosted Documenso requires a .p12 signing certificate for legally valid digital signatures.

# Generate a self-signed certificate (development only)
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365 -nodes
openssl pkcs12 -export -out signing-cert.p12 -inkey key.pem -in cert.pem

# Mount into Docker container
docker run -v $(pwd)/signing-cert.p12:/opt/documenso/cert.p12 \
  -e NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_LOCAL_FILE_PATH=/opt/documenso/cert.p12 \
  -e NEXT_PRIVATE_SIGNING_PASSPHRASE=your-passphrase \
  documenso/documenso:latest

For production, use a certificate from a trusted CA (e.g., GlobalSign, DigiCert).

Step 6: Self-Hosted Production Secrets

# Generate cryptographically secure secrets
openssl rand -hex 32  # NEXTAUTH_SECRET
openssl rand -hex 32  # NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_KEY
openssl rand -hex 32  # NEXT_PRIVATE_ENCRYPTION_SECONDARY_KEY

# Never reuse secrets across environments
# Never use default values in production

Security Checklist

Error Handling

Security Issue	Indicator	Response
Invalid API key	401 errors	Rotate key immediately
Webhook spoofing	Invalid secret header	Reject request, alert team
Key exposed in git	GitHub secret scanning alert	Revoke key, rotate, audit access
Brute force	Many 401s from same IP	Rate limit by IP at reverse proxy

Resources

Next Steps

For production deployment, see documenso-prod-checklist.

documenso-security-basics