AEGIS-128L

AEGIS-128L is a modern AES-based cipher with unique properties making it easier and safer to use than common alternatives:

  • 256-bit authentication tags, ensuring collision resistance within a given key; a tag can thus be used as a unique identifier for a message.

  • It can safely encrypt a practically unlimited number of messages, without any practical limits on their lengths.

  • It has a 128 bit nonce size, allowing random nonces to be safely used up to 2^48 messages for a single key.

  • It has a better security margin than AES-GCM

  • Leaking the state doesn’t leak the key

  • It is assumed to be key-committing, preventing partitioning attacks affecting other ciphers when used with low-entropy keys such as passwords. Namely, it is difficult to find distinct keys and/or nonces that successfully verify the same (ad, ciphertext, tag) tuple.

AEGIS-128L is also extremely fast on recent CPUs with AES pipelines, with lower memory usage than AES-GCM.

However, on platforms without hardware AES support, it is slow and not guaranteed to be protected against side channels. In that scenario, XChaCha20-Poly1305 is a better choice.

Unlike all other ciphers in libsodium, AEGIS-128L uses a 128 bit key.

Example (combined mode)

#define MESSAGE (const unsigned char *) "test"
#define MESSAGE_LEN 4
#define ADDITIONAL_DATA (const unsigned char *) "123456"
#define ADDITIONAL_DATA_LEN 6

unsigned char nonce[crypto_aead_aegis128l_NPUBBYTES];
unsigned char key[crypto_aead_aegis128l_KEYBYTES];
unsigned char ciphertext[MESSAGE_LEN + crypto_aead_aegis128l_ABYTES];
unsigned long long ciphertext_len;

crypto_aead_aegis128l_keygen(key);
randombytes_buf(nonce, sizeof nonce);

crypto_aead_aegis128l_encrypt(ciphertext, &ciphertext_len,
                              MESSAGE, MESSAGE_LEN,
                              ADDITIONAL_DATA, ADDITIONAL_DATA_LEN,
                              NULL, nonce, key);

unsigned char decrypted[MESSAGE_LEN];
unsigned long long decrypted_len;
if (crypto_aead_aegis128l_decrypt(decrypted, &decrypted_len,
                                  NULL,
                                  ciphertext, ciphertext_len,
                                  ADDITIONAL_DATA,
                                  ADDITIONAL_DATA_LEN,
                                  nonce, key) != 0) {
    /* message forged! */
}

Combined mode

In combined mode, the authentication tag is directly appended to the encrypted message. This is usually what you want.

int crypto_aead_aegis128l_encrypt(unsigned char *c,
                                  unsigned long long *clen_p,
                                  const unsigned char *m,
                                  unsigned long long mlen,
                                  const unsigned char *ad,
                                  unsigned long long adlen,
                                  const unsigned char *nsec,
                                  const unsigned char *npub,
                                  const unsigned char *k);

The crypto_aead_aegis128l_encrypt() function encrypts a message m whose length is mlen bytes using a secret key k (crypto_aead_aegis128l_KEYBYTES bytes) and public nonce npub (crypto_aead_aegis128l_NPUBBYTES bytes).

The encrypted message, as well as a tag authenticating both the confidential message m and adlen bytes of non-confidential data ad, are put into c.

ad can be a NULL pointer with adlen equal to 0 if no additional data are required.

At most mlen + crypto_aead_aegis128l_ABYTES bytes are put into c, and the actual number of bytes is stored into clen unless clen is a NULL pointer.

nsec is not used by this particular construction and should always be NULL.

The public nonce npub should never ever be reused with the same key. The recommended way to generate it is to use randombytes_buf() for the first message, and increment it for each subsequent message using the same key.

int crypto_aead_aegis128l_decrypt(unsigned char *m,
                                  unsigned long long *mlen_p,
                                  unsigned char *nsec,
                                  const unsigned char *c,
                                  unsigned long long clen,
                                  const unsigned char *ad,
                                  unsigned long long adlen,
                                  const unsigned char *npub,
                                  const unsigned char *k);

The crypto_aead_aegis128l_decrypt() function verifies that the ciphertext c (as produced by crypto_aead_aegis128l_encrypt()) includes a valid tag using a secret key k, a public nonce npub, and additional data ad (adlen bytes).

ad can be a NULL pointer with adlen equal to 0 if no additional data are required.

nsec is not used by this particular construction and should always be NULL.

The function returns -1 if the verification fails.

If the verification succeeds, the function returns 0, puts the decrypted message into m and stores its actual number of bytes into mlen if mlen is not a NULL pointer.

At most clen - crypto_aead_aegis128l_ABYTES bytes will be put into m.

Detached mode

Some applications may need to store the authentication tag and the encrypted message at different locations.

For this specific use case, “detached” variants of the functions above are available.

int crypto_aead_aegis128l_encrypt_detached(unsigned char *c,
                                           unsigned char *mac,
                                           unsigned long long *maclen_p,
                                           const unsigned char *m,
                                           unsigned long long mlen,
                                           const unsigned char *ad,
                                           unsigned long long adlen,
                                           const unsigned char *nsec,
                                           const unsigned char *npub,
                                           const unsigned char *k);

The crypto_aead_aegis128l_encrypt_detached() function encrypts a message m with a key k and a nonce npub. It puts the resulting ciphertext, whose length is equal to the message, into c.

It also computes a tag that authenticates the ciphertext as well as optional, additional data ad of length adlen. This tag is put into mac, and its length is crypto_aead_aegis128l_ABYTES bytes.

nsec is not used by this particular construction and should always be NULL.

int crypto_aead_aegis128l_decrypt_detached(unsigned char *m,
                                           unsigned char *nsec,
                                           const unsigned char *c,
                                           unsigned long long clen,
                                           const unsigned char *mac,
                                           const unsigned char *ad,
                                           unsigned long long adlen,
                                           const unsigned char *npub,
                                           const unsigned char *k);

The crypto_aead_aegis128l_decrypt_detached() function verifies that the authentication tag mac is valid for the ciphertext c of length clen bytes, the key k , the nonce npub and optional, additional data ad of length adlen bytes.

If the tag is not valid, the function returns -1 and doesn’t do any further processing.

If the tag is valid, the ciphertext is decrypted and the plaintext is put into m. The length is equal to the length of the ciphertext.

nsec is not used by this particular construction and should always be NULL.

void crypto_aead_aegis128l_keygen(unsigned char k[crypto_aead_aegis128l_KEYBYTES]);

This is equivalent to calling randombytes_buf() but improves code clarity and can prevent misuse by ensuring that the provided key length is always be correct.

Constants

  • crypto_aead_aegis128l_ABYTES

  • crypto_aead_aegis128l_KEYBYTES

  • crypto_aead_aegis128l_NPUBBYTES

Notes

  • The key size is 128 bits (16 bytes), unlike all other ciphers in this library.

  • Unique nonces are required for each messsages.

  • AEGIS can also be used as a very fast MAC, by encrypting an empty message, and putting the actual message to be authenticated in the ad parameter, which can be up to 2^61 bytes long.

  • However, it should NOT be used as a hash function. If the key is known, state collisions can be crafted.

  • Unlike AES-GCM and Salsa/ChaChaPoly1305, it is believed to be impractical to find multiple AEGIS keys that successfully decrypt a given (ad, ciphertext, tag) tuple (receiver-binding game). However, this security property doesn't hold true any more if the associated data inputs can be freely chosen in addition to the keys (FROB security). If commitment to the associated data is necessary, set the ad parameter to the hash of the associated data, using a collision-resistant and preimage-resistant hash function.

  • AEGIS was added in libsodium version 1.0.19.

See also

PreviousAEGIS-256NextAES256-GCM

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