bitcoin-hpke

This is an implementation of the HPKE hybrid encryption standard (RFC 9180) on secp256k1.

Warning

This crate has not been formally audited. Cloudflare did a security review of version 0.8, though:

The HPKE implementation we decided on comes with the caveat of not yet being formally audited, so we performed our own internal security review. We analyzed the cryptography primitives being used and the corresponding libraries. Between the composition of said primitives and secure programming practices like correctly zeroing memory and safe usage of random number generators, we found no security issues.

What it implements

This implementation complies with the HPKE standard (RFC 9180).

Here are all the primitives listed in the spec. The primitives with checked boxes are the ones that are implemented.

• KEMs
  • DHKEM(secp256k1, HKDF-SHA256)
• KDFs
  • HKDF-SHA256
  • HKDF-SHA384
  • HKDF-SHA512
• AEADs
  • ChaCha20Poly1305

Crate Features

Default features flags: alloc, secp.

Feature flag list:

• alloc - Includes allocating methods like AeadCtxR::open() and AeadCtxS::seal()
• secp - Enables secp256k1-based KEMs
• std - Includes an implementation of std::error::Error for HpkeError. Also does what alloc does.

For info on how to omit or include feature flags, see the cargo docs on features.

Usage Examples

See the client-server example for an idea of how to use HPKE.

Breaking changes

Breaking changes in v0.12

The serde_impls feature was removed. If you were using this and require backwards compatible serialization/deserialization, see the wiki page here.

MSRV

The current minimum supported Rust version (MSRV) is 1.63.0.

To build and test with the MSRV you will need to pin the below dependency versions:

cargo update -p half --precise 2.2.1
cargo update -p regex --precise 1.9.6

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of changes made throughout past versions.

Tests

To run all tests, execute cargo test --all-features. This includes known-answer tests, which test against test-vector-COMMIT_ID.json,where COMMIT_ID is the short commit of the version of the spec that the test vectors came from. The finalized spec uses commit 5f503c5. See the reference implementation for information on how to generate a test vector.

Benchmarks

To run all benchmarks, execute cargo bench --all-features. If you set your own feature flags, the benchmarks will still work, and run the subset of benches that it is able to. The results of a benchmark can be read as a neat webpage at target/criterion/report/index.html.

Ciphersuites benchmarked:

• NIST Ciphersuite with 256-bit security: ChaCha20Poly1305, HKDF-SHA256, secp256k1

Functions benchmarked in each ciphersuite:

• Kem::gen_keypair
• setup_sender with OpModes of Base, Auth, Psk, and AuthPsk
• setup_receiver with OpModes of Base, Auth, Psk, and AuthPsk
• AeadCtxS::seal with plaintext length 64 and AAD length 64
• AeadCtxR::open with ciphertext length 64 and AAD length 64

Agility

A definition: crypto agility refers to the ability of a cryptosystem or protocol to vary its underlying primitives. For example, TLS has "crypto agility" in that you can run the protocol with many different ciphersuites.

This crate does not support crypto agility out of the box. This is because the cryptographic primitives are encoded as types satisfying certain constraints, and types need to be determined at compile time (broadly speaking). That said, there is nothing preventing you from implementing agility yourself.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option.