open-quantum-safe/liboqs
Liboqs
Liboqs is a C library that provides a unified interface for quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, including key encapsulation and digital signature mechanisms. It is designed to facilitate the integration of post-quantum security into existing protocols and applications, ensuring data protection against future threats from large-scale quantum computers.
The library distinguishes itself through a focus on high-assurance implementations and side-channel resistance, utilizing constant-time primitives to prevent timing-based information leakage. It offers extensive build-time configuration, allowing developers to select specific algorithms and manage binary size, which enables deployment across diverse environments ranging from servers to resource-constrained embedded systems.
The project includes comprehensive tooling for performance benchmarking and hardware-agnostic entropy injection, supporting the use of custom random number generators. It also provides built-in test harnesses for verifying constant-time execution and evaluating the efficiency of cryptographic operations across various processor architectures.
Features
- Post-Quantum Cryptography - Provides a unified C library for quantum-resistant key encapsulation and digital signature algorithms.
- Cryptographic Algorithm Interfaces - Exposes a unified interface for diverse quantum-safe algorithms to simplify integration into existing security protocols.
- Cryptographic Abstractions - Exposes a unified C-based interface layer for diverse post-quantum cryptographic algorithms.
- Cryptographic Toolkits - Provides a modular, C-based cryptographic library optimized for resource-constrained environments and embedded systems.
- Digital Message Signing - Implements quantum-resistant signature schemes to verify the authenticity and integrity of digital data.
- Key Encapsulation Interfaces - Provides quantum-resistant key encapsulation mechanisms for establishing secure shared secrets.
- Side-Channel Resistant Primitives - Implements cryptographic primitives designed to avoid secret-dependent branching and memory access patterns.
- Timing-Side-Channel Protections - Provides testing tools to verify constant-time execution and prevent timing-based side-channel vulnerabilities.
- Constant-Time Memory Access - Implements constant-time memory access patterns to prevent timing-based side-channel information leakage.
- Embedded Libraries - Supports removing standard library dependencies and providing custom entropy callbacks for embedded environments.
- Build Configurations - Provides build configurations to restrict compiled output to specific algorithms for resource-constrained environments.
- Cryptographic Algorithm Selection - Enables or disables specific security algorithms during the build process to manage binary size.
- Algorithm Groupings - Allows developers to select predefined groups of cryptographic algorithms to meet specific industry standards.
- Cross-Platform Deployment Targets - Distributes cryptographic toolkits across heterogeneous computing environments to ensure consistent security.
- Memory-Efficient Algorithms - Enables selection of memory-efficient cryptographic algorithms to balance RAM consumption and system stability.
- Memory Footprint Reduction - Offers build-time configuration to minimize memory footprint and binary size for resource-constrained deployment.
- Binary Size and Compilation Optimizations - Allows build-time selection of specific cryptographic algorithms to optimize binary size and security requirements.
- Cross-Platform Library Compilations - Supports building cryptographic binaries for various target architectures and operating systems.
- Embedded Library Deployments - Facilitates the execution of security algorithms across desktop, mobile, and embedded architectures.
- Cryptographic Benchmarking - Includes performance testing routines to evaluate the efficiency of cryptographic implementations across hardware architectures.
- Hash-Based Signature Libraries - Supports stateful hash-based signature schemes for long-term security applications requiring private key usage tracking.
- Verified Implementations - Incorporates formally verified third-party cryptographic implementations to ensure high-assurance security.
- Entropy Source Callbacks - Supports custom entropy source callbacks for integrating hardware-backed random number generation.
- Post-Quantum Key Exchange - Embeds post-quantum key exchange and digital signature mechanisms into applications for long-term data protection.
- Embedded and Hardware - Optimizes security libraries for resource-constrained hardware by managing memory footprints and entropy sources.
- Build-Time Configuration - Provides compile-time configuration flags to include or exclude specific cryptographic algorithms for binary size optimization.
- High-Assurance System Construction - Incorporates formally verified cryptographic primitives to ensure high-assurance semantic correctness.
- Algorithm Performance Benchmarking - Evaluates the execution speed and efficiency of security algorithms using high-precision hardware counters.
- Hardware Performance Benchmarking - Includes built-in test harnesses and hardware cycle counters for benchmarking cryptographic performance.
- Quantum Cryptography - C library for quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms.
