/cifra

A collection of cryptographic primitives targeted at embedded use.

Primary LanguageCCreative Commons Zero v1.0 UniversalCC0-1.0

Cifra

Cifra is a collection of cryptographic primitives targeted at embedded use.

Build Status

Documentation

Analysis Status

Coverage Status

Aims

In order of descending emphasis, cifra aims for:

  • Clarity and simplicity.
  • Countermeasures for side channel leaks inherent in some algorithms.
  • Suitability for embedded use. Particularly: cifra uses an absolute minimum of the standard C library and is reasonably efficient with respect to code and data space.

Features

  • AES in the GCM, CCM, EAX and OCB authenticated encryption modes.
  • NORX authenticated encryption system.
  • SHA224, SHA256, SHA384 and SHA512 hash functions (including HMAC and PBKDF2).
  • SHA3-224, SHA3-256, SHA3-384, SHA3-512 hash functions (FIPS 202 compatible).
  • ChaCha20 and Salsa20 stream ciphers.
  • Poly1305 one time MAC.
  • 100% code coverage by line, zero static analysis defects, valgrind-clean.

Additionally cifra imports curve25519 from elsewhere (μNaCl, NaCl, tweetNaCl, Adam Langley's curve25519-donna) for comparison between various implementations on embedded targets.

Documentation

Available at Read the Docs.

Testing

There is quite a lot of testing available:

  • Host builds: run make test in the src directory. This builds and runs assorted test programs.
  • Emulated embedded builds: run make test in the src/arm directory. This expects to find qemu-system-gnuarmeclipse on the path. These tests assume a Cortex-M3 target.
  • Cortex-M0 on-target tests: run make test.stm32f0 in the src/arm directory. This expects to find openocd on the path, with an STM32F0xx attached via stlinkv2. It uses ARM semihosting to report results.
  • Cortex-M3/4 on-target tests: run make test.stm32f1 or make test.stm32f3 as above.

Additionally all embedded targets expect to find the arm-none-eabi toolchain to be on the path.

Measurements

All measurements performed at -Os (optimise for space), on the following MCUs:

Core Part number Price (1s) Max clock Flash SRAM
Cortex-M0 STM32F030F4P6 1.17EUR 48MHz 16KB 4KB
Cortex-M3 STM32F103C8T6 2.87EUR 72MHz 64KB 20KB
Cortex-M4F STM32F303K6T6 4.53EUR 72MHz 32KB 12KB

More measurements are available for AEAD modes on my blog post: Benchmarking Modern Authenticated Encryption on €1 devices.

AES

This test does a key schedule, then encrypts one block.

128-bit key

Core Cycles (key schedule + block) Cycles (key schedule) Cycles (block) Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 7156 2147 5009 312B 1020B
Cortex-M3 4692 1591 3101 300B 960B
Cortex-M4F 4591 1571 3020 300B 960B

256-bit key

Core Cycles (key schedule + block) Cycles (key schedule) Cycles (block) Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 10611 3650 6961 396B 1100B
Cortex-M3 6735 2450 4285 380B 1048B
Cortex-M4F 6588 2416 4172 380B 1048B

AES128-GCM

This test encrypts and authenticates a 16 byte message, with 16 bytes additionally authenticated data. It includes the initial key schedule.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 57022 796B 2600B
Cortex-M3 44306 812B 2644B
Cortex-M4F 43657 812B 2644B

AES128-EAX

This test encrypts and authenticates a 16 byte message, with 16 bytes additionally authenticated data. It includes the initial key schedule.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 50564 932B 2836B
Cortex-M3 32855 932B 2780B
Cortex-M4F 32159 932B 2780B

AES128-CCM

This test encrypts and authenticates a 16 byte message, with 16 bytes additionally authenticated data. It includes the initial key schedule.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 37677 772B 2280B
Cortex-M3 24462 780B 2256B
Cortex-M4F 23949 780B 2256B

NORX32

This test encrypts and authenticates a 16 byte message, with 16 bytes additionally authenticated data.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 10692 320B 1636B
Cortex-M3 6909 320B 1820B
Cortex-M4F 6855 320B 1820B

ChaCha20

This test encrypts a 64 byte message.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 5981 564B 1416B
Cortex-M3 3487 544B 1328B
Cortex-M4F 3468 544B 1328B

(For comparison with AES, add an AES256 key schedule plus 4 blocks. That's about 33K cycles.)

Salsa20

This test encrypts a 64 byte message.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 6173 560B 1412B
Cortex-M3 3320 552B 1272B
Cortex-M4F 3311 552B 1272B

SHA256

This test hashes the empty string (one compression function invocation).

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 11561 312B 1760B
Cortex-M3 6530 300B 1708B
Cortex-M4F 6278 300B 1708B

SHA512

This test hashes the empty string (one compression function invocation).

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 38447 796B 2888B
Cortex-M3 28771 836B 2988B
Cortex-M4F 28777 836B 2980B

SHA3-256

This test hashes the empty string (one sponge permutation).

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 93648 848B 2212B
Cortex-M3 74321 856B 2164B
Cortex-M4F 72215 856B 2140B

SHA3-512

This test hashes the empty string (one sponge permutation).

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 92565 880B 2212B
Cortex-M3 73509 888B 2164B
Cortex-M4F 71419 888B 2140B

HMAC-SHA256

This test computes a MAC with a 32 byte key over the message "hello world".

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 48924 1328B 2200B
Cortex-M3 28333 1324B 2132B
Cortex-M4F 27337 1324B 2132B

Poly1305-AES

This test computes a MAC with a 32 byte key over the message "hello world". It includes the AES nonce processing.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 15719 704B 1920B
Cortex-M3 11328 696B 1964B
Cortex-M4F 10706 696B 1932B

Curve25519

This test is one point multiplication.

This uses the implementation from μNaCl by Düll, Haase, Hinterwälder, Hutter, Paar, Sánchez and Schwabe.

Core Cycles Stack Code size
Cortex-M0 4070271 464B 5596B
Cortex-M3 3720363 448B 5536B
Cortex-M4F 3720105 448B 5536B

See curve25519-shootout for comparitive measurements for other curve25519 implementations.

C library requirements

Cifra requires memcpy, memset, and abort.

Future

  • Keccak hash function (aka SHA3).
  • Poly1305 one-time MAC.
  • Constant time curve25519 for Cortex-M4F using the FPU.
  • Constant time curve25519 for Cortex-M3 (avoiding the variable-time multiplier).

Notable past bugs/advisories

  • Issue #2: in all versions before commit d62aa26e (September 16th 2015) too much padding was added when hashing messages of certain lengths. Specifically, messages whose length satisfied len % 64 = 55 for SHA1/SHA224/SHA256 or len % 128 = 119 for SHA384/SHA512. SHA3 was not affected. Better testing is now in place.
  • Issue #3: in all versions before commit 82d77cd8 (April 16th 2016) EAX would produce wrong tags for empty AADs or messages. The underlying CMAC is now more resistant to this case.

License

CC0.

Please attribute the author. This is a request only, and not a license term.

Author

Joseph Birr-Pixton jpixton@gmail.com