diff --git a/doc/api/crypto.md b/doc/api/crypto.md
index 385dff2b808ded..5e8736bde40d73 100644
--- a/doc/api/crypto.md
+++ b/doc/api/crypto.md
@@ -3005,6 +3005,10 @@ The `password` is used to derive the cipher key and initialization vector (IV).
 The value must be either a `'latin1'` encoded string, a [`Buffer`][], a
 `TypedArray`, or a `DataView`.
 
+<strong class="critical">This function is semantically insecure for all
+supported ciphers and fatally flawed for ciphers in counter mode (such as CTR,
+GCM, or CCM).</strong>
+
 The implementation of `crypto.createCipher()` derives keys using the OpenSSL
 function [`EVP_BytesToKey`][] with the digest algorithm set to MD5, one
 iteration, and no salt. The lack of salt allows dictionary attacks as the same
@@ -3124,6 +3128,10 @@ cipher in CCM or OCB mode (e.g. `'aes-128-ccm'`) is used. In that case, the
 authentication tag in bytes, see [CCM mode][].
 For `chacha20-poly1305`, the `authTagLength` option defaults to 16 bytes.
 
+<strong class="critical">This function is semantically insecure for all
+supported ciphers and fatally flawed for ciphers in counter mode (such as CTR,
+GCM, or CCM).</strong>
+
 The implementation of `crypto.createDecipher()` derives keys using the OpenSSL
 function [`EVP_BytesToKey`][] with the digest algorithm set to MD5, one
 iteration, and no salt. The lack of salt allows dictionary attacks as the same
diff --git a/doc/api/deprecations.md b/doc/api/deprecations.md
index 25efb8f0a9e9f9..b0203d552503c7 100644
--- a/doc/api/deprecations.md
+++ b/doc/api/deprecations.md
@@ -2114,10 +2114,10 @@ changes:
 
 Type: Runtime
 
-Using [`crypto.createCipher()`][] and [`crypto.createDecipher()`][] should be
+Using [`crypto.createCipher()`][] and [`crypto.createDecipher()`][] must be
 avoided as they use a weak key derivation function (MD5 with no salt) and static
 initialization vectors. It is recommended to derive a key using
-[`crypto.pbkdf2()`][] or [`crypto.scrypt()`][] and to use
+[`crypto.pbkdf2()`][] or [`crypto.scrypt()`][] with random salts and to use
 [`crypto.createCipheriv()`][] and [`crypto.createDecipheriv()`][] to obtain the
 [`Cipher`][] and [`Decipher`][] objects respectively.