Mercurial > dropbear
diff libtomcrypt/notes/tech0003.txt @ 285:1b9e69c058d2
propagate from branch 'au.asn.ucc.matt.ltc.dropbear' (head 20dccfc09627970a312d77fb41dc2970b62689c3)
to branch 'au.asn.ucc.matt.dropbear' (head fdf4a7a3b97ae5046139915de7e40399cceb2c01)
author | Matt Johnston <matt@ucc.asn.au> |
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date | Wed, 08 Mar 2006 13:23:58 +0000 |
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children | 6dba84798cd5 |
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--- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/libtomcrypt/notes/tech0003.txt Wed Mar 08 13:23:58 2006 +0000 @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +Tech Note 0003 +Minimizing Memory Usage +Tom St Denis + +Introduction +------------ + +For the most part the library can get by with around 20KB of stack and about 32KB of heap even if you use the +public key functions. If all you plan on using are the hashes and ciphers than only about 1KB of stack is required +and no heap. + +To save space all of the symmetric key scheduled keys are stored in a union called "symmetric_key". This means the +size of a symmetric_key is the size of the largest scheduled key. By removing the ciphers you don't use from +the build you can minimize the size of this structure. For instance, by removing both Twofish and Blowfish the +size reduces to 768 bytes from the 4,256 bytes it would have been (on a 32-bit platform). Or if you remove +Blowfish and use Twofish with TWOFISH_SMALL defined its still 768 bytes. Even at its largest the structure is only +4KB which is normally not a problem for any platform. + + +Cipher Name | Size of scheduled key (bytes) | +------------+-------------------------------| +Twofish | 4,256 | +Blowfish | 4,168 | +3DES | 768 | +SAFER+ | 532 | +Serpent | 528 | +Rijndael | 516 | +XTEA | 256 | +RC2 | 256 | +DES | 256 | +SAFER [#] | 217 | +RC5 | 204 | +Twofish [*] | 193 | +RC6 | 176 | +CAST5 | 132 | +Noekeon | 32 | +Skipjack | 10 | +------------+-------------------------------/ +Memory used per cipher on a 32-bit platform. + +[*] For Twofish with TWOFISH_SMALL defined +[#] For all 64-bit SAFER ciphers. + +Noekeon is a fairly fast cipher and uses very little memory. Ideally in low-ram platforms all other ciphers should be +left undefined and Noekeon should remain. While Noekeon is generally considered a secure block cipher (it is insecure +as a hash) CAST5 is perhaps a "runner-up" choice. CAST5 has been around longer (it is also known as CAST-128) and is +fairly fast as well. + +You can easily accomplish this via the "config.pl" script. Simply answer "n" to all of the ciphers except the one you want +and then rebuild the library. [or you can hand edit mycrypt_custom.h] + +