Cryptographic Hardware Accelerators
A Cryptographic Hardware Accelerator can be
- integrated into the soc as a separate processor, as special purpose CPU (aka Core).
- integrated in a Coprocessor on the circuit board
- contained on a Chip on an extension circuit board, this can be connected to the mainboard via some BUS, e.g. PCI
- an ISA extension like e.g. AES instruction set and thus integral part of the CPU (in that case a kernel driver is not needed)
The purpose is to load off the very computing intensive tasks of encryption/decryption and compression/decompression.
As can be seen in this AES instruction set article, the acceleration is usually achieved by doing certain arithmetic calculation in hardware.
Its use in application usually involve a number of layers:
- The kernel needs a hardware-specific driver to use its capabilities. It is usually built into the kernel for boards that support them, and allow access by services that run in kernel-mode.
- To use them in userspace, when the acceleration is not in the instruction set of the CPU, it is supported via a kernel driver (/dev/crypto or AF_ALG socket).
- The above steps provide the bare minimum to allow userspace use, but it is more usual to use them inside a crypto library, such as gnutls or openssl, allowing access by most apps linked to them.
Performance
Depending on which arithmetic calculations exactly are being done in the specific hardware, the results differ widely. You should not concern yourself with theoretical bla,bla but find out how a certain implementation performs in the task you want to do with it! You could want to
- you could attach a USB drive to your device and mount a local filesystem like ext3 from it. Then you want to read from and write to this filesystem from the Internet over a secured protocol. Let's use
sshfs
. You would set up a sshfs.server on your device and a sshfs.client on the other end. Now how fast can you read/write to this with and without Cryptographic Hardware Accelerators. If the other end, the client, is a “fully grown PC” with a 2GHz CPU, it will probably perform fast enough to use the entire bandwidth of your Internet connection. If the server side is some embedded device, with let's say some 400MHz MIPS CPU, it could benefit highly from some integrated (and supported!) acceleration. You probably want enough performance, that you can use your entire bandwidth. Well, now go and find some benchmark showing you precisely the difference with enabled/disabled acceleration. Because you will not be able to extrapolate this information from specifications you find on this page or on the web.
- you could want to run an OpenVPN or an OpenConnect server on your router/embedded device, instead of using WEP/WPA/WPA2. There will be no reading from/writing to a USB device. Find benchmarks that show you exactly the performance for this purpose. You won't be able to extrapolate this information from other benchmarks.
- think of other practical uses, and find specific benchmarks.
Finding out what's available in the Kernel
If your boards supports hardware crypto acceleration, the respective drivers should already be built into the kernel. Some crypto engines have their own packages, and these may need to be installed first.
To see all of the available crypto drivers running on your system (this means after installing the packages, if needed), take a look at /proc/crypto.
# cat /proc/crypto name : cbc(aes) driver : mv-cbc-aes module : kernel priority : 300 refcnt : 1 selftest : passed internal : no type : skcipher async : yes blocksize : 16 min keysize : 16 max keysize : 32 ivsize : 16 chunksize : 16 walksize : 16 name : cbc(aes) driver : cbc-aes-neonbs module : kernel priority : 250 refcnt : 1 selftest : passed internal : no type : skcipher async : yes blocksize : 16 min keysize : 16 max keysize : 32 ivsize : 16 chunksize : 16 walksize : 16 name : sha256 driver : mv-sha256 module : kernel priority : 300 refcnt : 1 selftest : passed internal : no type : ahash async : yes blocksize : 64 digestsize : 32 name : sha256 driver : sha256-neon module : kernel priority : 250 refcnt : 2 selftest : passed internal : no type : shash blocksize : 64 digestsize : 32 name : sha256 driver : sha256-asm module : kernel priority : 150 refcnt : 1 selftest : passed internal : no type : shash blocksize : 64 digestsize : 32 name : sha256 driver : sha256-generic module : sha256_generic priority : 100 refcnt : 1 selftest : passed internal : no type : shash blocksize : 64 digestsize : 32
This was edited to only show AES-CBC and SHA256. Both AF_ALG and /dev/crypto interfaces allow userspace access to any crypto driver offering symmetric-key ciphers, and digest algorithms. That means hardware acceleration, but also software-only drivers. The use of software drivers is almost always slower than implementing it in userspace, as the context switches slow things down considerably.
To identify hardware-drivers, look for drivers with types skcipher
and shash
, having priority >= 300, but beware that AES-NI and similar CPU instructions will have a high priority as well, and do not need /dev/crypto or AF_ALG to be used!
Notice in this case, that are two drivers offering cbc(aes)
: cbc-aes-neonbs
(software driver, using neon asm instruction, and mv-cbc-aes
(Marvell CESA, hw accelerated), and four offering sha256
: sha256-generic
(soft, generic C code), sha256-asm
(soft, basic arm asm), sha256-neon
(soft, using neon asm instruction), and mv-sha256
(Marvell CESA). The kernel will export the one with the highest priority for each algorithm. In this case, it would be the hw accelerated Marvell CESA drivers: mv-cbc-aes, and mv-sha256.
For IPsec ESP, which is done by the Kernel, this will be enough to tell you if you are able to use the crypto accelerator, and you don't need to do anything further. Just make sure you're using the same algorithm made available by your crypto driver. For other uses, openssl should be checked.
Enabling the userspace interface
The crypto drivers enable the algorithms for kernel use. To be able to access them from userspace, another driver needs to be used. In OpenWrt, there are two of them: cryptodev
, and AF_ALG
. Opinions on the subject may vary, but /dev/crypto has the speed advantage here.
cryptodev
Cryptodev uses a /dev/crypto
device to export the kernel algorithms. In OpenWrt 19.07 and later, it is provided by the kmod-cryptodev
, and is installed automatically when you install libopenssl-devcrypto
.
In OpenWrt 18.06.x and earlier, /dev/crypto required compiling the driver yourself. Run make menuconfig
and select
- kmod-crypto-core: m
- kmod-cryptodev: m
Installing the `kmod-cryptodev` package will create a `/dev/crypto` device, even if you don't have any hw-crypto. /dev/crypto
will export kernel crypto drivers regardless of being implemented in software or hardware. Use of kernel software drivers may severely slow crypto performance! Don't install this package unless you know you have hw-crypto drivers installed!
AF_ALG
The AF_ALG interface uses sockets to allow access to the kernel crypto algorithms, so you won't see anything in the filesystem. It is provided by the kmod-crypto-user
package.
Checking openssl support
Openssl supports hardware crypto acceleration through an engine. You may find out what engines are available, along with the enabled algorithms, and configuration commands by running openssl engine -t -c
:
(devcrypto) /dev/crypto engine [DES-CBC, DES-EDE3-CBC, BF-CBC, AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, AES-128-CTR, AES-192-CTR, AES-256-CTR, AES-128-ECB, AES-192-ECB, AES-256-ECB, CAMELLIA-128-CBC, CAMELLIA-192-CBC, CAMELLIA-256-CBC,MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512] [ available ] (rdrand) Intel RDRAND engine [RAND] [ available ] (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support [ unavailable ]
For openssl-1.0.2 and earlier, the engine was called cryptodev
. It was renamed to devcrypto
in openssl 1.1.0. In this example, engine 'devcrypto' is available, showing the list of algorithms available.
Starting in OpenSSL 1.1.0, an AF_ALG engine can be used. In OpenWrt 19.07, it is packaged as libopenssl-afalg
, but it requires a custom built: the package will not show up under 'Libraries', 'SSL', 'libopenssl' unless you go to 'Global build settings', 'Kernel build options', and select 'Compile the kernel with asynchronous IO support'. This engine supports only AES-CBC, and needs to be enabled in /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
, but it does not accept the CIPHERS
, DIGESTSS
, or USE_SOFTDRIVERS
options.
In OpenWrt 19.07, the shipped /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
already has the basic engine configuration sections for both the devcrypto and the orignal afalg engines. To enable them, uncomment the respective lines under the [engines]
section.
Shortly after 19.07.0 was released, an alternate AF_ALG engine was added, libopenssl-afalg_sync
that is basically a mirror of the devcrypto engine, but using the AF_ALG interface. It accepts all of the options, and is configured the same way as the devcrypto
engine. You may follow the steps below, just configure it under afalg
, instead of devcrypto
. As of 19.07.0, the openssl.cnf
file does not have the CIPHERS
, DIGESTS
and USE_SOFTDRIVERS
options listed, but you can just copy them from the [devcrypto] section. Note that the OpenWrt package is called afalg_sync
, but for openssl the engine it is simply afalg
. It can't coexist with the original engine. Even though opinions my vary, its creator, cotequeiroz, states that the afalg_sync (as of v1.0.1) performance is better than the original afalg engine, but poorer than devcrypto.
Checking openssl support for AES-NI hw crypto on x86_64 (normal PC hardware)
OpenSSL in OpenWrt on x86 supports AES-NI CPU instructions natively and should use them automatically where available
You can try two different commands and see if performance is different
This should use AES-NI and should have bigger performance
openssl speed -elapsed -evp aes-128-cbc
This has a runtime switch that disables use of AES-NI in openSSL and should therefore have lower performance
OPENSSL_ia32cap="~0x200000200000000" openssl speed -elapsed -evp aes-128-cbc
this is an example of the results, showing the OpenSSL with AES-NI support (faster)
root@routegateway:~# openssl speed -elapsed -evp aes-128-cbc You have chosen to measure elapsed time instead of user CPU time. Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 117879925 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 39584711 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 10062149 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 2530718 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 318704 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16384 size blocks: 158373 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s OpenSSL 1.1.1g 21 Apr 2020 built on: Sun Aug 2 16:16:00 2020 UTC options:bn(64,64) rc4(16x,int) des(int) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr) compiler: x86_64-openwrt-linux-musl-gcc -fPIC -pthread -m64 -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -O3 -pipe -fno-caller-saves -fno-plt -fhonour-copts -Wno-error=unused-but-set-variable -Wno-error=unused-result -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fstack-protector -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=1 -Wl,-z,now -Wl,-z,relro -O3 -fpic -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -znow -zrelro -DOPENSSL_USE_NODELETE -DL_ENDIAN -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_CPUID_OBJ -DOPENSSL_IA32_SSE2 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT5 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DKECCAK1600_ASM -DRC4_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DAESNI_ASM -DVPAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM -DECP_NISTZ256_ASM -DX25519_ASM -DPOLY1305_ASM -DNDEBUG The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-128-cbc 628692.93k 844473.83k 858636.71k 863818.41k 870274.39k 864927.74k
and this is the result without AES-NI support (slower).
root@routegateway:~# OPENSSL_ia32cap="~0x200000200000000" openssl speed -elapsed -evp aes-128-cbc You have chosen to measure elapsed time instead of user CPU time. Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 37905593 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 10779104 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 2769347 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 702288 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 88129 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s Doing aes-128-cbc for 3s on 16384 size blocks: 44055 aes-128-cbc's in 3.00s OpenSSL 1.1.1g 21 Apr 2020 built on: Sun Aug 2 16:16:00 2020 UTC options:bn(64,64) rc4(16x,int) des(int) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr) compiler: x86_64-openwrt-linux-musl-gcc -fPIC -pthread -m64 -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -O3 -pipe -fno-caller-saves -fno-plt -fhonour-copts -Wno-error=unused-but-set-variable -Wno-error=unused-result -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fstack-protector -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=1 -Wl,-z,now -Wl,-z,relro -O3 -fpic -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -znow -zrelro -DOPENSSL_USE_NODELETE -DL_ENDIAN -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_CPUID_OBJ -DOPENSSL_IA32_SSE2 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT5 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DKECCAK1600_ASM -DRC4_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DAESNI_ASM -DVPAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM -DECP_NISTZ256_ASM -DX25519_ASM -DPOLY1305_ASM -DNDEBUG The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-128-cbc 202163.16k 229954.22k 236317.61k 239714.30k 240650.92k 240599.04k
Using the libopenssl-devcrypto package
Starting with 19.x branch, the /dev/crypto support can be packaged separately from the main openssl library, as the libopenssl-devcrypto
package. The engine is not enabled by default, even when the package is installed. It requires editing the /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
, as follows.
Configuring the devcrypto engine
When using the standalone package, this becomes mandatory. If the engine is built into libcrypto, it is only optional.
To configure the engine, you must first add a line to the default section (i.e. the first, unnamed section), adding the following line, which tells which section is used to configure the library. The sections are lines within brackets []:
# this points to the main library configuration section openssl_conf = openssl_def
This will point the main openssl configuration to be done in a section called openssl_def
.
Then, that section needs to be created, anywhere past the last line in the unnamed section. I'd just add it to the very end of the file. It will add an engine configuration section, where you can add a section for every engine you're configuring, and finally, a section to configure the engine itself. In this example, we are configuring just the /dev/crypto engine:
[openssl_def] # this is the main library configuration section engines=engine_section [engine_section] # this is the engine configuration section, where the engines are listed devcrypto=devcrypto_section [devcrypto_section] # this is the section where the devcrypto engine commands are used CIPHERS=ALL DIGESTS=NONE
You can use the -vv
option of the openssl engine
command to view the available configuration commands, along with a description of each command. Notice the line disabling all digests. Digests are computed fairly fast in software, and to use hardware crypto requires a context switch, which is an “expensive” operation. So in order to be worth using an algorithm, it needs to be much faster than software to offset the cost of the context switch. Efficiency depends on the length of each operation. For ciphers, it is faster to use hardware than software in chunks of 1000 bytes or more, depending on your hardware. For digests, the size has to be 10x greater. Considering an MTU of 1500 bytes, which is the de facto limit on TLS encryption block limit, it will not be worth to enable digests. You can use a different configuration file for every application, by setting the environment variable OPENSSL_CONF
to the full path of the configuration file to be used.
Showing /dev/crypto algorithm information
There's a command for the devcrypto engine, not to be used in openssl.cnf
, that will show some useful information about the algorithms available. It shows a list of engine-supported algorithms, if it can be used (a session can be opened) with /dev/crypto or not, along with the corresponding kernel driver, and if it hw-accelerated or no. To use it, run:
# openssl engine -pre DUMP_INFO devcrypto (devcrypto) /dev/crypto engine Information about ciphers supported by the /dev/crypto engine: Cipher DES-CBC, NID=31, /dev/crypto info: id=1, driver=mv-cbc-des (hw accelerated) Cipher DES-EDE3-CBC, NID=44, /dev/crypto info: id=2, driver=mv-cbc-des3-ede (hw accelerated) Cipher BF-CBC, NID=91, /dev/crypto info: id=3, CIOCGSESSION (session open call) failed Cipher CAST5-CBC, NID=108, /dev/crypto info: id=4, CIOCGSESSION (session open call) failed Cipher AES-128-CBC, NID=419, /dev/crypto info: id=11, driver=mv-cbc-aes (hw accelerated) Cipher AES-192-CBC, NID=423, /dev/crypto info: id=11, driver=mv-cbc-aes (hw accelerated) Cipher AES-256-CBC, NID=427, /dev/crypto info: id=11, driver=mv-cbc-aes (hw accelerated) Cipher RC4, NID=5, /dev/crypto info: id=12, CIOCGSESSION (session open call) failed Cipher AES-128-CTR, NID=904, /dev/crypto info: id=21, driver=ctr-aes-neonbs (software) Cipher AES-192-CTR, NID=905, /dev/crypto info: id=21, driver=ctr-aes-neonbs (software) Cipher AES-256-CTR, NID=906, /dev/crypto info: id=21, driver=ctr-aes-neonbs (software) Cipher AES-128-ECB, NID=418, /dev/crypto info: id=23, driver=mv-ecb-aes (hw accelerated) Cipher AES-192-ECB, NID=422, /dev/crypto info: id=23, driver=mv-ecb-aes (hw accelerated) Cipher AES-256-ECB, NID=426, /dev/crypto info: id=23, driver=mv-ecb-aes (hw accelerated) Information about digests supported by the /dev/crypto engine: Digest MD5, NID=4, /dev/crypto info: id=13, driver=mv-md5 (hw accelerated), CIOCCPHASH capable Digest SHA1, NID=64, /dev/crypto info: id=14, driver=mv-sha1 (hw accelerated), CIOCCPHASH capable Digest RIPEMD160, NID=117, /dev/crypto info: id=102, driver=unknown. CIOCGSESSION (session open) failed Digest SHA224, NID=675, /dev/crypto info: id=103, driver=sha224-neon (software), CIOCCPHASH capable Digest SHA256, NID=672, /dev/crypto info: id=104, driver=mv-sha256 (hw accelerated), CIOCCPHASH capable Digest SHA384, NID=673, /dev/crypto info: id=105, driver=sha384-neon (software), CIOCCPHASH capable Digest SHA512, NID=674, /dev/crypto info: id=106, driver=sha512-neon (software), CIOCCPHASH capable
Measuring the algorithm speed
As stated above, the best way to determine the speed is benchmarking the actual application you're using.
If that's not feasible, openssl speed
can be used to compare the algorithm speed with and without the engine. To measure the speed without the engine, set CIPHERS=NONE
and DIGESTS=NONE
in /etc/ssl/openssl.cnf
. You must use the -elapsed
option to get a reasonable calculation. That's because the speed command will use the CPU user time by default. When using the engine, most all of the processing will be done in kernel time, and the user time will be close to zero, yielding an exaggerated result. This is the measurement of the AES-256-CTR algorithm, implemented 100% in software (you must configure USE_SOFTDRIVERS=1
in openssl.cnf
to be able to use software drivers with devcrypto).
# time openssl speed -evp aes-256-ctr Doing aes-256-ctr for 3s on 16 size blocks: 1506501 aes-256-ctr's in 0.32s Doing aes-256-ctr for 3s on 64 size blocks: 830921 aes-256-ctr's in 0.18s Doing aes-256-ctr for 3s on 256 size blocks: 526267 aes-256-ctr's in 0.15s Doing aes-256-ctr for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 167828 aes-256-ctr's in 0.07s Doing aes-256-ctr for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 22723 aes-256-ctr's in 0.00s Doing aes-256-ctr for 3s on 16384 size blocks: 11400 aes-256-ctr's in 0.00s OpenSSL 1.1.1b 26 Feb 2019 built on: Wed Dec 13 18:43:03 2017 UTC options:bn(64,32) rc4(char) des(long) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr) compiler: arm-openwrt-linux-muslgnueabi-gcc -fPIC -pthread -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -O3 -pipe -mcpu=cortex-a9 -mfpu=vfpv3-d16 -fno-caller-saves -fno-plt -fhonour-copts -Wno-error=unused-but-set-variable -Wno-error=unused-result -mfloat-abi=hard -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fstack-protector -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=1 -Wl,-z,now -Wl,-z,relro -O3 -fpic -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -znow -zrelro -DOPENSSL_USE_NODELETE -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_CPUID_OBJ -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DKECCAK1600_ASM -DAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM -DECP_NISTZ256_ASM -DPOLY1305_ASM -DNDEBUG -DOPENSSL_PREFER_CHACHA_OVER_GCM The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-256-ctr 75325.05k 295438.58k 898162.35k 2455083.89k infk infk real 0m 18.04s user 0m 0.72s sys 0m 17.27s
Notice the infinite speeds. If you spend 0 seconds in CPU user time, and use that as a divisor, you'll get infinite. The speed command, with the addtion of the -elapsed
parameter will return a more realistic result:
# time openssl speed -evp aes-256-ctr -elapsed type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-256-ctr 7975.70k 17403.54k 44777.30k 57178.79k 62076.25k 62395.73k real 0m 18.04s user 0m 0.88s sys 0m 17.11s
This is the result of the AES-256-CTR without the engine:
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-256-ctr 39684.36k 47027.86k 53044.99k 60888.06k 63548.07k 63706.45k real 0m 18.04s user 0m 17.98s sys 0m 0.00s
In this case -elapsed
does not matter much, as almost 100% of the execution time is spent in user-mode, and CPU user time would actually be a better measurement by not counting time spent in other processes.
With that out of the way, let's see an actual hardware-implemented cipher:
# time openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc -elapsed The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-256-cbc 1551.04k 6126.44k 21527.81k 55995.05k 95027.20k 99936.94k real 0m 18.04s user 0m 0.21s sys 0m 5.13s
For comparison, this is the same cipher, implemented by the libcrypto software:
# time openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc -elapsed type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes 16384 bytes aes-256-cbc 39603.10k 47420.37k 50270.38k 51002.71k 51249.15k 51232.77k real 0m 18.03s user 0m 18.00s sys 0m 0.01s
This is typical for a /dev/crypto cipher. There's a cost in CPU usage, the context switches needed to run the code in the kernel, represented by the 5.13s of system time used. That cost will not vary much with the size of the crypto operation. Because of that, for small batches, the use of hardware drivers will slow you down considerably. As the block size increases, /dev/crypto becomes the best choice. You must be aware of how the application uses the cipher. For example, AES-128-ECB is used by openssl to seed the rng, using 16-bytes calls. I haven't seen any other use of the ECB ciphers, so it is best to disable them entirely.
Disabling digests
Please, don't enable digests unless you know what you're doing. They are usually slower than software, except for large (> 10k) blocks. Some applications--openssh, for example--will not work with /dev/crypto digests. This is a limitation of how the engine works. Openssh will save a partial digest, and then fork, duplicating that context, and working with successive copies of it, which is useful for HMAC, where the hash of the key remains constant. In the kernel, however, those contexts are still linked to the same session, so when one process calls another update, or closes that digest context, the kernel session is changed/closed for all of the instances, and you'll get a libcrypto failure. For well-behaved applications using large update blocks, you may enable digests. Use a separate copy of the openssl.cnf
configuration file, and set OPENSSL_CONF=_path_to_file
in the environment before running it (add it to the respective file in /etc/init.d/). Again, benchmarking the actual application you're using is the best way to gauge the impact of hardware crypto.
Enabling specific hardware driver
Soekris vpn1411
Run make menuconfig
and select
Kernel modules → Cryptographic API modules
- kmod-crypto-core: m
- kmod-crypto-aes: m
- kmod-crypto-des: m
- kmod-crypto-hw-hifn-795x: m
Marvell CESA
Cryptographic Engine and Security Acceleration
- 2.6.32: AES commit
- 2.6.35: SHA1 and HMAC-SHA1 commit
- r22877: [kirkwood] Add kernel package for the mv_cesa crypto module
- r23145: [kirkwood] Fix mv_cesa module dependencies and .ko file location Thanks KanjiMonster & Memphiz
- r23229: [packages/kernel] Make mv_cesa crypto module available on Orion as well.
- r23383: [package] kernel: underscores in package names are bad, rename kmod-crypto-mv_cesa to kmod-crypto-mv-cesa
- r26406: kernel: add a missing dependency for the mv_cesa crypto driver
- r26407: kernel: mv_cesa depends on CRYPTO_BLKCIPHER2 and CRYPTO_HASH2
- r26413: kernel: remove double definition of depends in crypto-mv-cesa and make it look like the other entries. Thank you Maarten
Geode AES engine
VIA padlock
Historical
Note: If you want to learn about the current situation, you should search the Internet or maybe ask in the forum. This is outdated. Especially if you want to know, how fast a copy from a mounted filesystem (say ext3 over USB) over the scp is, you should specifically search for such benchmarks. Some models of the BCM47xx/53xx family support hardware accelerated encryption for IPSec (AES, DES, 3DES), simple hash calculations (MD5, SHA1) and TLS/SSL+HMAC processing. Not all devices have a hw crypto supporting chip. At least Asus WL500GD/X, Netgear WGT634U and Asus WL700gE do have hw crypto. However, testing of a WGT634U indicates that a pin under the BCM5365 was not pulled low to enable strong bulk cryptography, limiting the functionality to single DES.
- How did you find that out?
- Do you get an interrupt when sending a crypto job to the chip and limiting the request to DES only?)
The specification states the hardware is able to support 75Mbps (9,4MB/s) of encrypted throughput. Without hardware acceleration using the blowfish encryption throughput is only ~0,4MB/s. Benchmark results that show the difference between software and hardware accelerated encryption/decryption can be found here. Due to the overhead of hardware/DMA transfers and buffer copies between kernel/user space it gives only a good return for packet sizes greater than 256 bytes. This size can be reduced for IPSec, because network hardware uses DMA and there is no need to copy the (encrypted) data between kernel and user space. The hardware specification needed for programming the crypto API of the bcm5365P (Broadcom 5365P) can be found here.
- The crypto chip is accessible through the SSB bus (Sonics Silicon Backplane). A Linux driver for SSB is available in OpenWRT's kernel >= 2.6.23 (Kamikaze)
- An example about how to communicate with the crypto chip can be found here (file b5365ips.tar.bz2).
- An OCF Linux driver that works with the ASUS WL500gP can be found in Trunk (SVN) or here and is called ubsec_ssb. Only OCF-enabled applications can be accelerated. That means, if you want e.g. an accelerated OpenSSH you have to manually enable cryptodev in OpenSSL. The driver is still considered experimental.
- Sun Crypto Accelerator 500 and 1000 (X6762A) cards are based on BCM5821. Might be worth checking Solaris references as well. Here is OpenSolaris driver for Broadcom crypto chips.
- Asus WL-700gE sources come with patched FreeSwan to utilize ubsec.
- Closed-source binary included in Asus Wl-700gE sources do support AES based on headers.
- There's a Linux port of the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework (OCF) but the ubsec driver (Broadcom 58xx PCI cards) is not ported yet. If you compile OCF with the /dev/crypto device driver, userspace applications and libraries such as OpenSSL can be accelerated. There are patches for Openswan as well.
- Discussion about hardware accelerated crypto.
- Various versions of old BCM5820 driver sources.
- BCM5801/BCM5805/BCM5820 Security Processor Software Reference Library http://www.broadcom.com/products/access_request.php?category_id=0&id=7&filename=5801-5805-5820-SRL101-R.pdf
- Cisco PIX VAC+ Encryption module is 64-bit PCI card based on Broadcom BCM5823. Another similar card is Checkpoint VPN-1 Accelerator Card II, III and IV from Silicom.
| SoC / CPU | Accelerated Methods | Datasheet |
| BCM94704AGR | WEP 128, AES OCB AES CCM | 94704AGR-PB00-R.pdf |
| BCM?4704P | WEP 128, AES OCB, AES CCM, VPN | 94704AGR-PB00-R.pdf |
| BCM5365 | AES (up to 256-bit CTR and CBC modes), DES, 3DES (CBC), HMAC-SHA1, HMAC-MD5, SHA1 and MD5. IPSec encryption and single pass authentication. | 5365_5365P-PB01-R.pdf |
| BCM5365P | AES (up to 256-bit CTR and CBC modes), DES, 3DES (CBC), HMAC-SHA1, HMAC-MD5, SHA1 and MD5. IPSec encryption and single pass authentication. | 5365_5365P-PB01-R.pdf |