RECENT BLOG NEWS

wolfSSL now supports using the Trust Protection Unit (TPU), Modular Arithmetic Accelerator (MAA), and TRNG provided by Analog Devices MAX32666 and MAX32665 microcontrollers.

The implementation can be seen in PR #7777 to wolfSSL, and is in wolfSSL starting at 5.7.4!

The port offers various usage options: fully leveraging all hardware features, selectively enabling specific hardware acceleration like SHA acceleration, or utilizing Crypto Callbacks for mixed usage between hardware and software. For a guide on setting up the port please refer to the README.

Currently wolfSSL supports offloading the following algorithms and operations to the respective hardware:

TRNG:

• RNG

TPU:

• AES-CBC – 128/192/256
• AES-GCM – 128/192/256
• AES-ECB – 128/192/256
• SHA-1
• SHA-2 – 224/256/384/512

MAA (HW Accelerated Math Operations up to 2048 bits):

• Modulate (mod)
• Modular Addition (addmod)
• Modular Subtraction (submod)
• Modular Multiplication (mulmod)
• Modular Exponentiation (expmod)
• Modular Squaring (sqrmod)

Benchmarks:

These benchmarks were collected using a Cortex-M4 clocked at 96 Mhz included on the MAX32666 FTHR dev kit, and a bare metal implementation of our benchmark. The timer used for these benchmarks can be enabled with the addition of MAX3266X_RTC to user_settings.h for reproduction.

AES ECB/CBC/GCM:

AES-CBC and AES-ECB Hardware Acceleration provides a hefty 2x uplift in performance when compared to our Arm assembly acceleration and normal software implementations.
AES-GCM does not provide the same uplift due to the hardware not supporting GCM explicitly, but we take advantage of the ECB support of the hardware to still provide a speedup when compared to our standard software implementation.
You can enable this kind of speed up for other AES modes by adding HAVE_AES_ECB to user_settings.h.

All algorithms of SHA provide a consistent boost to performance. With our benchmark tool we see up to a 7x performance for SHA-384/512 when compared to our software implementations. As the algorithm gets simpler we see less of a performance increase, however the consistent throughput is still impressive.

Math Acceleration (RSA 2048 and ECDSA p256):

Using the Math Acceleration hardware we do see a decrease in performance for RSA 2048 and ECDSA p256 when compared to our software implementations. This is likely due to the setup and preprocessing that needs to happen before sending the operands down to the hardware.

 

 

Download:

For our official release please checkout our download page!

Questions?

For information about using MAX32666 or MAX32665 hardware acceleration in your project, or any general inquiries about supporting your project’s hardware, reach out to our support team at support@wolfSSL.com

If you have questions about any of the above, please contact us at facts@wolfSSL.com or +1 425 245 8247.

Download wolfSSL Now

wolfSSL is adding support for X509 Attribute Certificates (ACERTs, for short), enabled with --enable-acert. This initial support includes reading, printing, and verifying. Furthermore, it uses our new ASN.1 template implementation, and supports RSA-PSS as well.

But what is an X509 Attribute Certificate, and how does it differ from the more commonly encountered X509 Public Key Certificate? Defined in RFC 5755, an Attribute Certificate is a digitally signed binding between an identity and authorization attributes. In contrast to X509 Public Key Certs, an X509 Attribute Cert does not contain a public key. However, the public key used to verify an Attribute Cert could be found in an X509 Pub Key Cert.

If you’re curious and want to learn more, check out the X509 ACERT pull request and our recently added ACERT example. The latter shows an example of using ACERT support with our openssl compatibility layer.

If you are interested in X509 Attribute Certificates support or have questions about any of the above, please contact us at facts@wolfSSL.com or +1 425 245 8247.

Download wolfSSL Now

Most people know that wolfSSL supports being a PKCS11 consumer. It is easy to enable this with the --enable-pkcs11 configure time flag and then trying out the examples. Now, what most people don’t realize is that we also have the ability to be a PKCS11 provider!! This is via our library called wolfPKCS11. Check out the source repo on github.

The most interesting thing about PKCS11 is that the post-quantum stateful hash-based signature scheme LMS/HSS has already been added to the PKCS11 standard. If you look at the latest specification, you can already find an example template definition for a private key:

CK_OBJECT_CLASS keyClass = CKO_PRIVATE_KEY;
CK_KEY_TYPE keyType = CKK_HSS;
CK_UTF8CHAR label[] = “An HSS private key object”;
CK_ULONG hssLevels = 123;
CK_ULONG lmsTypes[] = {123,...};
CK_ULONG lmotsTypes[] = {123,...};
CK_BYTE value[] = {...};
CK_BBOOL true = CK_TRUE;
CK_BBOOL false = CK_FALSE;
CK_ATTRIBUTE template[] = {
    {CKA_CLASS, &keyClass, sizeof(keyClass)},
    {CKA_KEY_TYPE, &keyType, sizeof(keyType)},
    {CKA_TOKEN, &true, sizeof(true)},
    {CKA_LABEL, label, sizeof(label)-1},
    {CKA_SENSITIVE, &true, sizeof(true)},
    {CKA_EXTRACTABLE, &false, sizeof(true)},
    {CKA_HSS_LEVELS, &hssLevels, sizeof(hssLevels)},
    {CKA_HSS_LMS_TYPES, lmsTypes, sizeof(lmsTypes)},
    {CKA_HSS_LMOTS_TYPES, lmotsTypes, sizeof(lmotsTypes)},
    {CKA_VALUE, value, sizeof(value)},
    {CKA_SIGN, &true, sizeof(true)}
}; 

Are you looking to use wolfSSL to consume LMS/HSS? Our wolfCrypt library already has support for LMS/HSS; want to consume it via a PKCS11 interface? Want to get ahead of the curve and start prototyping ML-KEM (FIPS 203) or ML-DSA (FIPS 204) in PKCS11? Send a message to facts@wolfSSL.com to let us know which of these you want accelerated.

If you have questions about any of the above, please contact us at facts@wolfSSL.com or +1 425 245 8247.

Download wolfSSL Now

wolfSSL release 5.7.4 is now available, with exciting optimizations for ARM devices and enhancements to post-quantum cryptography algorithms. If you’re using wolfSSL on RISC-V, we’ve also included new performance enhancements specifically for RISC-V devices. Alongside these optimizations and new features, several important fixes were made. One notable fix involves the behavior of X509_STORE_add_cert() and X509_STORE_load_locations() functions to better align with OpenSSL when the compatibility layer is enabled.

Below are some of the key changes in this release. For a more comprehensive list, refer to the ChangeLog.

New Features and Additions

• RISC-V 64: Added new assembly optimizations for SHA-256, SHA-512, ChaCha20, Poly1305, and SHA-3 (PRs 7758, 7833, 7818, 7873, 7916).
• DTLS 1.2 Connection ID: Implemented support for Connection ID (CID) (PR 7995).
• DevkitPro Support: Added support for (DevkitPro)libnds (PR 7990).
• Mosquitto: Added a port for Mosquitto OSP (Open Source Project) (PR 6460).
• sssd: Added a port for init sssd (PR 7781).
• eXosip2: Added support for eXosip2 (PR 7648).
• STM32G4: Added support for STM32G4 (PR 7997).
• MAX32665 and MAX32666: Added support for TPU hardware and ARM ASM crypto callback (PR 7777).
• libspdm: Added support for building wolfSSL to be used in libspdm (PR 7869).
• Nucleus Plus: Added support for use with Nucleus Plus 2.3 (PR 7732).
• RFC5755 Attribute Certificates: Initial support for x509 attribute certificates (acerts) with --enable-acert (PR 7926).
• PKCS#11 RSA Padding Offload: Allows tokens to perform CKM_RSA_PKCS (sign/encrypt), CKM_RSA_PKCS_PSS (sign), and CKM_RSA_PKCS_OAEP (encrypt) (PR 7750).
• Heap/Pool Allocation: Added “new” and “delete” style functions for heap/pool allocation and freeing of low-level crypto structures (PRs 3166, 8089).

Espressif / Arduino Updates

• Updated wolfcrypt settings.h
• Updated Espressif SHA, utility, memory, and time helpers (PR 7955).
• Fixed _thread_local_start and _thread_local_end for Espressif (PR 8030).
• Enhanced benchmarking for Espressif devices (PR 8037).
• Introduced Espressif common CONFIG_WOLFSSL_EXAMPLE_NAME in Kconfig (PR 7866).
• Added wolfSSL esp-tls
• Updated wolfSSL release for Arduino (PR 7775).

Post-Quantum Crypto Updates

• Dilithium: Support for fixed-size arrays in dilithium_key (PR 7727).
• Dilithium Precalc: Added option to use precalc with small sign (PR 7744).
• Kyber FIPS: Allowed Kyber to be built with FIPS (PR 7788).
• Kyber in Linux Kernel: Enabled Kyber ASM usage in Linux kernel module (PR 7872).
• Dilithium, Kyber: Updated to final specifications (PR 7877).
• Dilithium FIPS: Supported FIPS 204 Draft and Final Draft (PRs 7909, 8016).

ARM Assembly Optimizations

• ARM32: Added assembly optimizations for ChaCha20 and Poly1305 (PR 8020).
• Poly1305 Aarch64: Improved Poly1305 assembly optimizations for Aarch64 (PR 7859).
• Poly1305 Thumb-2: Added Poly1305 optimizations for Thumb-2 (PR 7939).
• STM32CubePack: Added ARM ASM build option to STM32CubePack (PR 7747).
• Visual Studio: Added ARM64 support to the Visual Studio project (PR 8010).
• Kyber ARM Optimizations: Added assembly optimizations for ARM32, Aarch64, ARMv7E-M, and ARMv7-M (PRs 8040, 7998, 7706).

If you have questions about any of the above, please contact us at facts@wolfSSL.com or +1 425 245 8247.

Download wolfSSL Now