Crypto++
Crypto++ (also known as CryptoPP, libcrypto++, and libcryptopp) is a free and open-source C++ class library of cryptographic algorithms and schemes written by Wei Dai. Crypto++ has been widely used in academia, student projects, open source and non-commercial projects, as well as businesses.[1] Released in 1995, the library fully supports 32-bit and 64-bit architectures for many major operating systems and platforms, including Android (using STLport), Apple (Mac OS X and iOS), BSD, Cygwin, IBM AIX and S/390, Linux, MinGW, Solaris, Windows, Windows Phone and Windows RT. The project also supports compilation using C++03, C++11 and C++17 runtime libraries; and a variety of compilers and IDEs, including Borland Turbo C++, Borland C++ Builder, Clang, CodeWarrior Pro, GCC (including Apple's GCC), Intel C++ Compiler (ICC), Microsoft Visual C/C++, and Sun Studio.
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Developer(s) | originally Wei Dai, the Crypto++ project since 2015 |
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Initial release | 1995 |
Stable release | 8.2
/ April 28, 2019 |
Repository | ![]() |
Written in | C++ |
Operating system | Cross-platform |
Type | Security library |
License | Boost Software License (previously Crypto++ License) / individual files into the public domain |
Website | www |
Algorithms
Crypto++ ordinarily provides complete cryptographic implementations, and often includes less popular, less frequently-used schemes. For example, Camellia is an ISO/NESSIE/IETF-approved block cipher roughly equivalent to AES, and Whirlpool is an ISO/NESSIE/IETF-approved hash function roughly equivalent to SHA; both are included in the library.[2][3]
Additionally, the Crypto++ library sometimes makes proposed and bleeding edge algorithms and implementations available for study by the cryptographic community. For example, VMAC, a universal hash-based message authentication code, was added to the library during its submission to the Internet Engineering Task Force (CFRG Working Group); and Brainpool curves, proposed in March 2009 as an Internet Draft in RFC 5639, were added to Crypto++ 5.6.0 in the same month.[4][5]
Primitive or Operation | Algorithms or Implementations |
---|---|
Pseudorandom number generators | LCG, KDF2, Blum Blum Shub, ANSI X9.17, Mersenne Twister, RDRAND and RDSEED |
High speed stream ciphers | ChaCha8/12/20, HC-128 and HC-256, Panama, Rabbit, Salsa20, SOSEMANUK, XSalsa20 |
AES and AES candidates | Rijndael (AES selection), RC6, MARS, Twofish, Serpent, CAST-256 |
Other block ciphers | ARIA, Blowfish, Camellia, CHAM, HIGHT, IDEA, Kalyna (128/256/512), LEA, RC5, Triple-DES (2- and 3-key), SEED, SHACAL-2, Simon and Speck (64/128), SIMECK, Skipjack, SM4, TEA, Threefish (256/512/1024), XTEA |
Block cipher modes of operation | ECB, CBC, CTS, CFB, OFB, CTR |
Authenticated encryption modes | CCM, GCM, EAX |
Block ciphers padding schemes | PKCS#5, PKCS#7, Zeros, One and zeros, W3C Padding |
Message authentication codes | VMAC, HMAC, CMAC, CBC-MAC, DMAC, Two-Track-MAC |
Cryptographic hash function | BLAKE2 (BLAKE2b and BLAKE2s), Keccak, SHA-1, SHA-2 (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512), SHA3, Tiger, WHIRLPOOL, RIPEMD (RIPEMD-128, RIPEMD-160, RIPEMD-256, and RIPEMD-320) |
Password based key derivation functions | PBKDF1 and PBKDF2 from PKCS #5, PBKDF from PKCS #12 appendix B, Krawczyk and Eronen's HKDF |
Public-key cryptography | RSA, DSA, ElGamal, Nyberg-Rueppel (NR), Rabin-Williams (RW), LUC, LUCELG, DLIES (variants of DHAES), ESIGN, curve25519 |
Padding schemes for public-key systems | PKCS#1 v2.0, OAEP, PSS, PSSR, IEEE P1363 EMSA2 and EMSA5 |
Key agreement schemes | Diffie–Hellman (DH), Unified Diffie–Hellman (DH2), Menezes–Qu–Vanstone (MQV), Hashed MQV (HMQV), Fully Hashed MQV (FHMQV), LUCDIF, XTR-DH, x25519 |
Elliptic curve cryptography | ECDSA, ECNR, ECIES, ECDH, ECMQV |
Secret Sharing | Shamir's secret sharing scheme, Rabin's information dispersal algorithm (IDA) |
The library also makes available primitives for number theoretic operations such as a fast multi-precision integers; prime number generation and verification; finite field arithmetic, including GF(p) and GF(2n); elliptical curves; and polynomial operations.
Furthermore, the library retains a collection of insecure or obsolescent algorithms for backward compatibility and historical value: MD2, MD4, MD5, Panama Hash, DES, ARC4, SEAL 3.0, WAKE, WAKE-OFB, DESX (DES-XEX3), RC2, SAFER, 3-WAY, GOST, SHARK, CAST-128, and Square.
Performance
In a 2007 ECRYPT workshop paper focusing on public key implementations of eight libraries, Ashraf Abusharekh and Kris Kaj found that "Crypto++ 5.1 [sic] leads in terms of support for cryptographic primitives and schemes, but is the slowest of all investigated libraries."[6]
In 2008, speed tests carried out by Timo Bingmann using seven open-source security libraries with 15 block ciphers, Crypto++ 5.5.2 was the top performing library under two block ciphers, and did not rank below the average library performance under the remaining block ciphers.[7]
Crypto++ also includes an auto-benchmarking feature, available from the command line (cryptest.exe b), the results of which are available at Crypto++ 5.6.0 Benchmarks.[8]
As with many other cryptographic libraries available for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 architectures, Crypto++ includes assembly routines for AES using AES-NI. With AES-NI, AES performance improves dramatically: 128-bit AES/GCM throughput increases from approximately 28.0 cycles per byte to 3.5 cycles per byte.[9][10][11]
Version releases
Crypto++ 1.0 was released in June 1995. Since its initial release, the library has seen nearly two dozen revisions, including an architectural change in version 5.0.[12][13] There have been ten releases using the version 5.0 architecture since March 2009.[14]
Version | Released Date |
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Crypto++ 5.6.0 | March 15, 2009 |
Crypto++ 5.6.1 | August 9, 2010 |
Crypto++ 5.6.2 | February 20, 2013 |
Crypto++ 5.6.3 | November 20, 2015 |
Crypto++ 5.6.4 | September 11, 2016 |
Crypto++ 5.6.5 | October 11, 2016 |
Crypto++ 6.0.0 | January 22, 2018 |
Crypto++ 6.1.0 | February 22, 2018 |
Crypto++ 7.0.0 | April 8, 2018 |
Crypto++ 8.0.0 | December 28, 2018 |
Crypto++ 8.1.0 | February 11, 2019 |
Crypto++ 8.2.0 | April 28, 2019 |
Lawrence Teo's compilation of previous Crypto++ releases dating back to 1995 can be found in the users group archives.[15]
FIPS validations
Crypto++ has received three Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 1 module validations with no post-validation issues.[16]
Version | Certificate | Dates |
---|---|---|
Crypto++ 5.0.4 | Certificate 343[17] | 2003-09-05, 2005-10-28 |
Crypto++ 5.2.3 | Certificate 562[18] | 2005-07-29, 2005-08-24, 2005-10-28 |
Crypto++ 5.3.0 | Certificate 819[19] | 2007-08-13, 2007-08-17 |
Crypto++ was moved to the CMVP's Historical Validation List in 2016. The move effectively means the library is no longer validated.
Licensing
As of version 5.6.1, Crypto++ consists of only public domain files, with a compilation copyright and a single open source license for the compilation copyright:[20]
The License of Crypto++ is somewhat unusual amongst open source projects. A distinction is made between the library as a compilation (i.e., collection), which is copyrighted by Wei Dai, and the individual files in it, which are public domain. The library is copyrighted as a compilation in order to place certain disclaimers (regarding warranty, export, and patents) in the license and to keep the attributions and public domain declarations intact when Crypto++ is distributed in source code form. The fact that individual files are public domain means that legally you can place code segments, entire files, or small sets of files (up to the limit set by fair use) into your own project and do anything you want with them without worrying about the copyright.
See also
- Computer science
- Symmetric cipher
- Comparison of cryptography libraries
References
-
- J. Kelsey, B. Schneier, D. Wagner, C. Hall (1998). "Cryptanalytic Attacks on Pseudorandom Number Generators". Fast Software Encryption, 5th International Proceedings. http://www.schneier.com/paper-prngs.pdf. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- C. Adjih, D. Raffo, P. Mühlethaler (2004). "OLSR: Distributed Key Management for Security" Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine. Independent Research. http://www2.lifl.fr/SERAC/downloads/attacks-olsr-dkm.pdf . Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- X. Yinglian, M. K. Reiter, D. O'Hallaron (2006). "Protecting Privacy in Key-Value Search Systems". Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ylxie/papers/report03.pdf. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- T. Zidenberg (2010). "Optimizing Crypto++ library for P4" Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine. Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Website. http://softlab-pro-web.technion.ac.il/projects/cryptoppopt/html/projectBook.html . Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- "Japan's First 128-bit Block Cipher 'Camellia' Approved as a New Standard Encryption Algorithm in the Internet". physorg.com. Retrieved 2010-08-12.
- A. Hartikainen; T. Toivanen; H. Kiljunen (2005). "Whirlpool hashing function". Secure Communications, Seminar Workshop. Lappeenranta University of Technology. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.98.6099. Missing or empty
|url=
(help) - "Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Brainpool Standard Curves and Curve Generation". RFC 5639. IETF. 2009. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- "Crypto++ 5.6.0 Release Notes". Crypto++ Website. 2009. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- A. Abusharekh; K. Kaj (2007). "Comparative Analysis of Software Libraries for Public Key Cryptography" (PDF). ECRYPT Workshop on Software Performance Enhancement for Encryption and Decryption. Retrieved 2010-08-12.
- T. Bingmann (2008). "Speedtest and Comparison of Open-Source Cryptography Libraries and Compiler Flags". Timo Bingmann Weblog. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- "Crypto++ 5.6.0 Benchmarks". Crypto++ Website. 2009. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- P. Schmid; A. Roos (2010). "AES-NI Performance Analyzed". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- T. Krovetz; W. Dai (2010). "Misdetection of MIPS endianness & How to get fast AES calls?". Crypto++ user group. Retrieved 2010-08-11.
- "Crypto++ 5.6.0 Pentium 4 Benchmarks". Crypto++ Website. 2009. Retrieved 2010-08-10.
- Announcement (2002). "Crypto++ 5.0 beta available". Crypto++ Mailing List. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- Announcement (2002). "Crypto++ 5.0 update". Crypto++ Mailing List. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- "Crypto++ Announcements List". Sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2010-08-14.
- L. Teo (2002). "Release Dates of Previous Versions". Crypto++ Mailing List. Retrieved 2010-08-09.
- "Crypto++TM Library Versions 5.3.0 [32-bit and 64-bit] Security Policy" (PDF). Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). 2007. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- "Validated FIPS 140-1 and FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Modules (2003)". Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). 2003. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- "Validated FIPS 140-1 and FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Modules (2005)". Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). 2005. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- "Validated FIPS 140-1 and FIPS 140-2 Cryptographic Modules (2007)". Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP). 2007. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- "Compilation Copyright for Crypto++". Crypto++ Website. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
External links
- Official website
- Crypto++ GitHub project
- List of projects that use Crypto++ (Includes nonprofit and for profit projects)
- Crypto++ users group