Crypto++

Template:Infobox software 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. Released in 1995, the library fully supports 32-bit and 64-bit architectures for many major operating systems, including Apple, BSD, Linux, and Windows. The project also supports compilation under a variety of compilers and IDEs, including Borland Turbo C++, Borland C++ Builder, CodeWarrior Pro, GCC (including Apple's GCC), Intel C++ Compiler (ICC), Microsoft Visual C/C++, and Sun Studio.

Algorithms

Crypto++ ordinarily provides complete cryptographic implementations, and often includes less popular, less frequently-used schemes. For example, Camellia is a ISO/NESSIE/IETF-approved block cipher roughly equivalent to AES, and Whirlpool is a ISO/NESSIE/IETF-approved hash function roughly equivalent to SHA; both are included in the library.

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.

Crypto++ algorithms and implementations

Primitive or Operation	Algorithms or Implementations
Pseudorandom number generators	LCG, KDF2, Blum Blum Shub, ANSI X9.17
High speed stream ciphers	Panama, Sosemanuk, Salsa20, XSalsa20
AES and AES candidates	Rijndael (AES selection), RC6, MARS, Twofish, Serpent, CAST-256
Other block ciphers	IDEA, Triple-DES (DES-EDE2 and DES-EDE3), Camellia, SEED, RC5, Blowfish, TEA, XTEA, Skipjack, SHACAL-2
Block cipher modes of operation	ECB, CBC, Ciphertext stealing (CTS), CFB, OFB, Counter (CTR)
Authenticated encryption modes	CCM, GCM, EAX
Block ciphers padding schemes	PKCS#5, PKCS#7, Zeros, One and zeros
Message authentication codes	VMAC, HMAC, CMAC, CBC-MAC, DMAC, Two-Track-MAC
Hash functions	SHA-1, SHA-2 (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512), Tiger, WHIRLPOOL, RIPEMD-128, RIPEMD-256, RIPEMD-160, RIPEMD-320
Password based key derivation functions	PBKDF1 and PBKDF2 from PKCS #5, PBKDF from PKCS #12 appendix B
Public-key cryptography	RSA, DSA, ElGamal, Nyberg-Rueppel (NR), Rabin-Williams (RW), LUC, LUCELG, DLIES (variants of DHAES), ESIGN
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), LUCDIF, XTR-DH
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."

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.

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.

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.

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. There have been eight releases using the version 5.0 architecture as of August 2010.

Crypto++ releases since version 5.0

Version	Released Date
Crypto++ 5.0	September 11, 2002
Crypto++ 5.1	March 24, 2003
Crypto++ 5.2.1	July 21, 2004
Crypto++ 5.4	December 23, 2006
Crypto++ 5.5.1	May 25, 2007
Crypto++ 5.5.2	September 24, 2007
Crypto++ 5.6.0	March 15, 2009
Crypto++ 5.6.1	August 9, 2010

Lawrence Teo's compilation of previous Crypto++ releases dating back to 1995 can be found in the users group archives.

FIPS Compliance

Unlike OpenSSL, which encountered post-validation issues from closed-sourced, for-profit factions, Crypto++ has received three Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 1 module validations with no post-validation issues.

FIPS validated Crypto++ modules

Version	Certificate	Dates
Crypto++ 5.0.4	Certificate 343	2003-09-05, 2005-10-28
Crypto++ 5.2.3	Certificate 562	2005-07-29, 2005-08-24, 2005-10-28
Crypto++ 5.3.0	Certificate 819	2007-08-13, 2007-08-17

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:

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See also

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• Computer science
• Symmetric cipher

External links

• Official website
• Crypto++ SourceForge project
• List of projects that use Crypto++ (Includes nonprofit and for profit projects)
• Crypto++ users group