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NaCl (pronounced "salt") is a new easy-to-use high-speed software library for network communication, encryption, decryption, signatures, etc.
NaCl's goal is to provide all of the core operations needed to build higher-level cryptographic tools.
Sodium is a portable, cross-compilable, installable, packageable fork of NaCl (based on the latest released upstream version nacl-20110221), with a compatible API.
The design choices, particularly in regard to the Curve25519 Diffie-Hellman function, emphasize security (whereas NIST curves emphasize "performance" at the cost of security), and "magic constants" in NaCl/Sodium have clear rationales.
The same cannot be said of NIST curves, where the specific origins of certain constants are not described by the standards.
And despite the emphasis on higher security, primitives are faster across-the-board than most implementations of the NIST standards.
Portability
In order to pick the fastest working implementation of each primitive, NaCl performs tests and benchmarks at compile-time. Unfortunately, the resulting library is not guaranteed to work on different hardware.
Sodium performs tests at run-time, so that the same binary package can still run everywhere.
Sodium is tested on a variety of compilers and operating systems, including Windows (with MingW or Visual Studio, x86 and x64), iOS and Android.
Installation
Sodium is a shared library with a machine-independent set of headers, so that it can easily be used by 3rd party projects.
The library is built using autotools, making it easy to package.
Installation is trivial, and both compilation and testing can take advantage of multiple CPU cores.
Download a tarball of libsodium, then follow the ritual:
$ ./configure
$ make && make check
# make install
Pre-compiled Win32 packages are available for download at the same location.
Integrity of source tarballs can currently be checked using PGP or
verified DNS queries (dig +dnssec +short txt <file>.download.libsodium.org
returns the SHA256 of any file available for download).
Pre-built binaries
Pre-built libraries for Visual studio 2010, 2012 and 2013, both for x86 and x64, are available for download at https://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/ , courtesy of Samuel Neves (@sneves).
Bindings for other languages
- C++: sodiumpp
- Common LISP cl-sodium
- Erlang: Erlang-NaCl
- Erlang: Salt
- Haskell: Saltine
- Idris: Idris-Sodium
- Java: Kalium
- Java JNI: Kalium-JNI
- Julia: Sodium.jl
- LUA: lua-sodium
- .NET: libsodium-net
- NodeJS: node-sodium
- Objective C: NAChloride
- Objective C: libsodium-objc
- OCaml: ocaml-sodium
- Perl: Crypto-Sodium
- Pharo/Squeak: Crypto-NaCl
- PHP: PHP-Sodium
- PHP: libsodium-php
- Python: PyNaCl
- Python: PySodium
- Racket: part of CRESTaceans
- Ruby: RbNaCl
- Ruby: Sodium
- Rust: Sodium Oxide
Comparison with vanilla NaCl
Sodium does not ship C++ bindings. These might be part of a distinct package.
The default public-key signature system in NaCl was a prototype that shouldn't be used any more.
Sodium ships with the SUPERCOP reference implementation of
Ed25519, and uses this system by default
for crypto_sign* operations.
For backward compatibility, the previous system is still compiled in,
as crypto_sign_edwards25519sha512batch*.
Additional features
The Sodium library provides some convenience functions in order to retrieve the current version of the package and of the shared library:
const char *sodium_version_string(void);
const int sodium_library_version_major(void);
const int sodium_library_version_minor(void);
Headers are installed in ${prefix}/include/sodium.
A convenience header includes everything you need to use the library:
#include <sodium.h>
This is not required, however, before any other libsodium functions, it is recommended to call:
sodium_init();
This will pick optimized implementations of some primitives, if they appear to work as expected after running some tests, and these will be used for subsequent operations. It will also initialize the pseudorandom number generator. This function should only be called once, and before performing any other operations. Doing so is required to ensure thread safety of all the functions provided by the library.
Sodium also provides helper functions to generate random numbers,
leveraging /dev/urandom or /dev/random on *nix and the cryptographic
service provider on Windows. The interface is similar to
arc4random(3). It is fork(2)-safe but not thread-safe. This holds
true for crypto_sign_keypair() and crypto_box_keypair() as well.
uint32_t randombytes_random(void);
Return a random 32-bit unsigned value.
void randombytes_stir(void);
Generate a new key for the pseudorandom number generator. The file descriptor for the entropy source is kept open, so that the generator can be reseeded even in a chroot() jail.
uint32_t randombytes_uniform(const uint32_t upper_bound);
Return a value between 0 and upper_bound using a uniform distribution.
void randombytes_buf(void * const buf, const size_t size);
Fill the buffer buf with size random bytes.
int randombytes_close(void);
Close the file descriptor or the handle for the cryptographic service provider.
A custom implementation of these functions can be registered with
randombytes_set_implementation().
In addition, Sodium provides a function to securely wipe a memory region:
void sodium_memzero(void * const pnt, const size_t size);
Warning: if a region has been allocated on the heap, you still have
to make sure that it can't get swapped to disk, possibly using
mlock(2).
In order to compare memory zones in constant time, Sodium provides:
int sodium_memcmp(const void * const b1_, const void * const b2_,
size_t size);
sodium_memcmp() returns 0 if size bytes at b1_ and b2_ are
equal, another value if they are not. Unlike memcmp(),
sodium_memcmp() cannot be used to put b1_ and b2_ into a defined
order.
And a convenience function for converting a binary buffer to a hexadecimal string:
char * sodium_bin2hex(char * const hex, const size_t hexlen,
const unsigned char *bin, const size_t binlen);
Sensitive data should not be swapped out to disk, especially if swap
partitions are not encrypted. Libsodium provides the sodium_mlock()
function to lock pages in memory before writing sensitive content to
them:
int sodium_mlock(void *addr, size_t len);
Once done with these pages, they can be unlocked with
sodium_munlock(). This function will zero the data before unlocking
the pages.
int sodium_munlock(void * addr, size_t len);
Easy interfaces to crypto_box and crypto_secretbox
crypto_box and crypto_secretbox require prepending
crypto_box_ZEROBYTES or crypto_secretbox_ZEROBYTE extra bytes to the
message, and making sure that these are all zeros.
A similar padding is required to decrypt the ciphertext. And this
padding is actually larger than the MAC size,
crypto_box_MACBYTES/crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES.
This API, as defined by NaCl, can be confusing. And while using a larger buffer and two pointers is not an issue for native C applications, this might not be an option when another runtime is controlling the allocations.
Libsodium provides an easy, higher-level interface to these operations.
int crypto_box_easy(unsigned char *c, const unsigned char *m,
unsigned long long mlen, const unsigned char *n,
const unsigned char *pk, const unsigned char *sk);
This function encrypts and authenticates a message m using the
sender's secret key sk, the receiver's public key pk and a nonce
n, which should be crypto_box_NONCEBYTES bytes long.
The ciphertext, including the MAC, will be copied to c, whose length
should be len(m) + crypto_box_MACBYTES, and that doesn't require to be
initialized.
int crypto_box_open_easy(unsigned char *m, const unsigned char *c,
unsigned long long clen, const unsigned char *n,
const unsigned char *pk, const unsigned char *sk);
This function verifies and decrypts a ciphertext c as returned by
crypto_box_easy(), whose length is clen, using the nonce n, the
receiver's secret key sk, and the sender's public key pk. The
message is stored to m, whose length should be at least len(c) - crypto_box_MACBYTES and that doesn't require to be initialized.
Similarily, secret-key authenticated encryption provide "easy" wrappers:
int crypto_secretbox_easy(unsigned char *c, const unsigned char *m,
unsigned long long mlen, const unsigned char *n,
const unsigned char *k);
int crypto_secretbox_open_easy(unsigned char *m, const unsigned char *c,
unsigned long long clen,
const unsigned char *n,
const unsigned char *k);
The length of the ciphertext, which will include the MAC, is
len(m) + crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES, and the length of the buffer for
the decrypted message doesn't have to be more than len(c) - crypto_secretbox_MACBYTES.
The "easy" interface is as fast as the traditional NaCl API and doesn't require any memory allocations.
New operations
crypto_shorthash
A lot of applications and programming language implementations have been recently found to be vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks when a hash function with weak security guarantees, like Murmurhash 3, was used to construct a hash table.
In order to address this, Sodium provides the “shorthash” function, currently implemented using SipHash-2-4. This very fast hash function outputs short, but unpredictable (without knowing the secret key) values suitable for picking a list in a hash table for a given key.
See crypto_shorthash.h for details.
crypto_generichash
This hash function provides:
- A variable output length (up to
crypto_generichash_BYTES_MAXbytes) - A variable key length (from no key at all to
crypto_generichash_KEYBYTES_MAXbytes) - A simple interface as well as a streaming interface.
crypto_generichash is currently being implemented using
Blake2.
crypto_pwhash (scrypt)
High-level functions for password hashing are not defined yet: they will eventually be wrappers for the winning function of the ongoing Password Hashing Competition.
Meanwhile, the scrypt function is available through explicitly-named functions, and will remain available in the library even after the PHC.
int crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256(unsigned char *out,
unsigned long long outlen,
const char *passwd,
unsigned long long passwdlen,
const unsigned char *salt,
unsigned long long opslimit,
size_t memlimit);
This function derives outlen bytes from a password passwd and a
salt salt that has to be crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256_SALTBYTES
bytes long.
The function will use at most memlimit bytes of memory and opslimit
is the maximum number of iterations to perform. Making the function
memory-hard and CPU intensive by increasing these parameters might increase
security.
Although password storage was not the primary goal of the scrypt function, it can still be used for this purpose:
int crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256_str
(char out[crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256_STRBYTES],
const char *passwd,
unsigned long long passwdlen,
unsigned long long opslimit,
size_t memlimit);
This function returns a crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256_STRBYTES
bytes C string (the length includes the final \0) suitable for storage.
The string is guaranteed to only include ASCII characters.
The function will use at most memlimit bytes of memory and opslimit
is the maximum number of iterations to perform. These parameters are
included in the output string, and do not need to be stored separately.
The function automatically generates a random salt, which is also included in the output string.
int crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256_str_verify
(const char str[crypto_pwhash_scryptsalsa208sha256_STRBYTES],
const char *passwd,
unsigned long long passwdlen);
This function verifies that hashing the plaintext password passwd
results in the stored hash value included in str when using the same
parameters.
0 is returned if the passwords are matching, -1 is they are not.
The plaintext password should be locked in memory using
sodium_mlock() and immediately zeroed out and unlocked after this
function returns, using sodium_munlock().
ChaCha20Poly1305
Sodium supports the ChaCha20Poly1305 Authenticated Encryption with Additional Data (AEAD) construction, as documented in the nir-cfrg-chacha20-poly1305-04 draft.
int crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_ad(unsigned char *c,
const unsigned char *m,
unsigned long long mlen,
const unsigned char *ad,
unsigned long long adlen,
const unsigned char *n,
const unsigned char *k);
This function encrypts the message m of length mlen with the key
k (whose size is crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_KEYBYTES bytes)
and nonce n (whose size is crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_NONCEBYTES).
c must be at least mlen + crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_ZEROBYTES long.
The function fills the first bytes of c with a tag authenticating both the
encrypted message and additional data ad whose length is adlen bytes.
The output of the previous function can be verified and decrypted using:
int crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_ad_open(unsigned char *m,
const unsigned char *c,
unsigned long long clen,
const unsigned char *ad,
unsigned long long adlen,
const unsigned char *n,
const unsigned char *k);
clen is the length of the ciphertext, as generated by the previous
function: it is equal to the length of the plaintext message +
crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_ZEROBYTES.
If the MAC can be verified, the plaintext is copied to m and the
function returns 0.
If the verification fails, the function returns -1.
The length of the additional data can be 0. Alternatively, the
crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305() and
crypto_secretbox_chacha20poly1305_open() variants can be used.
In order to be consistent with the secretbox API, the MAC is stored
before the encrypted message. This differs from the
draft on ChaCha20 and Poly1305 for IETF protocols, which stores the
MAC after the encrypted message.
However, the MAC is computed using the same algorithm, and can be moved after message if interoperability with other implementations is required.
Constants available as functions
In addition to constants for key sizes, output sizes and block sizes, Sodium provides these values through function calls, so that using them from different languages is easier.
CurveCP
CurveCP tools are part of a different project, libchloride. If you are interested in an embeddable CurveCP implementation, take a look at libcurvecpr.
Mailing list
A mailing-list is available to discuss libsodium.
In order to join, just send a random mail to sodium-subscribe {at}
pureftpd{dot}org.
License
See the COPYING file for details, AUTHORS for designers and
implementors, and THANKS for contributors.