Crypto API is a cryptography framework in the Linux kernel, for various parts of the kernel that deal with cryptography, such as IPsec and dm-crypt. It was introduced in kernel version 2.5.45 [1] and has since expanded to include essentially all popular block ciphers and hash functions.
Many platforms that provide hardware acceleration of AES encryption expose this to programs through an extension of the instruction set architecture (ISA) of the various chipsets (e.g. AES instruction set for x86). With this sort of implementation, any program (kernel-mode or user-space) may utilize these features directly.
Some platforms, such as the ARM Kirkwood SheevaPlug and AMD Geode processors, however, are not implemented as ISA extensions, and are only accessible through kernel-mode drivers. In order for user-mode applications that utilize encryption, such as wolfSSL, OpenSSL or GnuTLS, to take advantage of such acceleration, they must interface with the kernel. [2]
AF_ALG address family; [3] it was merged into version 2.6.38 of the Linux kernel mainline. [4] [5] There was once a plugin to OpenSSL to support AF_ALG, [6] which has been submitted for merging. [7] In version 1.1.0, OpenSSL landed another patch for AF_ALG contributed by Intel. [8] wolfSSL can make use of AF_ALG and cryptodev [9] /dev/crypto interface of OpenBSD was ported to Linux, [10] [11] [12] but never merged.The Open Sound System (OSS) is an interface for making and capturing sound in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It is based on standard Unix devices system calls. The term also sometimes refers to the software in a Unix kernel that provides the OSS interface; it can be thought of as a device driver for sound controller hardware. The goal of OSS is to allow the writing of sound-based applications that are agnostic of the underlying sound hardware.
OpenSSL is a software library for applications that provide secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping, and identify the party at the other end. It is widely used by Internet servers, including the majority of HTTPS websites.
OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server applications.
TLS acceleration is a method of offloading processor-intensive public-key encryption for Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to a hardware accelerator.
The Linux kernel provides multiple interfaces to user-space and kernel-mode code that are used for varying purposes and that have varying properties by design. There are two types of application programming interface (API) in the Linux kernel:
The device mapper is a framework provided by the Linux kernel for mapping physical block devices onto higher-level virtual block devices. It forms the foundation of the logical volume manager (LVM), software RAIDs and dm-crypt disk encryption, and offers additional features such as file system snapshots.
Netlink is a socket family used for inter-process communication (IPC) between both the kernel and userspace processes, and between different userspace processes, in a way similar to the Unix domain sockets available on certain Unix-like operating systems, including its original incarnation as a Linux kernel interface, as well as in the form of a later implementation on FreeBSD. Similarly to the Unix domain sockets, and unlike INET sockets, Netlink communication cannot traverse host boundaries. However, while the Unix domain sockets use the file system namespace, Netlink sockets are usually addressed by process identifiers (PIDs).
Network Security Services (NSS) is a collection of cryptographic computer libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications with optional support for hardware TLS/SSL acceleration on the server side and hardware smart cards on the client side. NSS provides a complete open-source implementation of cryptographic libraries supporting Transport Layer Security (TLS) / Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and S/MIME. NSS releases prior to version 3.14 are tri-licensed under the Mozilla Public License 1.1, the GNU General Public License, and the GNU Lesser General Public License. Since release 3.14, NSS releases are licensed under GPL-compatible Mozilla Public License 2.0.
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a free and open-source virtualization module in the Linux kernel that allows the kernel to function as a hypervisor. It was merged into the mainline Linux kernel in version 2.6.20, which was released on February 5, 2007. KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extensions, such as Intel VT or AMD-V. KVM has also been ported to other operating systems such as FreeBSD and illumos in the form of loadable kernel modules.
In computing, a cryptographic accelerator is a co-processor designed specifically to perform computationally intensive cryptographic operations, doing so far more efficiently than the general-purpose CPU. Because many servers' system loads consist mostly of cryptographic operations, this can greatly increase performance.
dm-crypt is a transparent block device encryption subsystem in Linux kernel versions 2.6 and later and in DragonFly BSD. It is part of the device mapper (dm) infrastructure, and uses cryptographic routines from the kernel's Crypto API. Unlike its predecessor cryptoloop, dm-crypt was designed to support advanced modes of operation, such as XTS, LRW and ESSIV, in order to avoid watermarking attacks. In addition to that, dm-crypt addresses some reliability problems of cryptoloop.
In computing, entropy is the randomness collected by an operating system or application for use in cryptography or other uses that require random data. This randomness is often collected from hardware sources, either pre-existing ones such as mouse movements or specially provided randomness generators. A lack of entropy can have a negative impact on performance and security.
An AES instruction set is a set of instructions that are specifically designed to perform AES encryption and decryption operations efficiently. These instructions are typically found in modern processors and can greatly accelerate AES operations compared to software implementations. An AES instruction set includes instructions for key expansion, encryption, and decryption using various key sizes.
There are various implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard, also known as Rijndael.
Mbed TLS is an implementation of the TLS and SSL protocols and the respective cryptographic algorithms and support code required. It is distributed under the Apache License version 2.0. Stated on the website is that Mbed TLS aims to be "easy to understand, use, integrate and expand".
wolfSSL is a small, portable, embedded SSL/TLS library targeted for use by embedded systems developers. It is an open source implementation of TLS written in the C programming language. It includes SSL/TLS client libraries and an SSL/TLS server implementation as well as support for multiple APIs, including those defined by SSL and TLS. wolfSSL also includes an OpenSSL compatibility interface with the most commonly used OpenSSL functions.
In computer networking, tcpcrypt is a transport layer communication encryption protocol. Unlike prior protocols like TLS (SSL), tcpcrypt is implemented as a TCP extension. It was designed by a team of six security and networking experts: Andrea Bittau, Mike Hamburg, Mark Handley, David Mazières, Dan Boneh and Quinn Slack. Tcpcrypt has been published as an Internet Draft. Experimental user-space implementations are available for Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Windows. There is also a Linux kernel implementation.
VIA PadLock is a central processing unit (CPU) instruction set extension to the x86 microprocessor instruction set architecture (ISA) found on processors produced by VIA Technologies and Zhaoxin. Introduced in 2003 with the VIA Centaur CPUs, the additional instructions provide hardware-accelerated random number generation (RNG), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), SHA-1, SHA256, and Montgomery modular multiplication.
The OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework (OCF) is a service virtualization layer for the uniform management of cryptographic hardware by an operating system. It is part of the OpenBSD Project, having been included in the operating system since OpenBSD 2.8. Like other OpenBSD projects such as OpenSSH, it has been ported to other systems based on Berkeley Unix such as FreeBSD and NetBSD, and to Solaris and Linux. One of the Linux ports is supported by Intel for use with its proprietary cryptographic software and hardware to provide hardware-accelerated SSL encryption for the open source Apache HTTP Server.
The tables below compare cryptography libraries that deal with cryptography algorithms and have API function calls to each of the supported features.
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