53 lines
		
	
	
		
			2.5 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Plaintext
		
	
	
	
	
	
			
		
		
	
	
			53 lines
		
	
	
		
			2.5 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			Plaintext
		
	
	
	
	
	
| Tech Note 0003
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| Minimizing Memory Usage
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| Tom St Denis
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| 
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| Introduction
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| ------------
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| 
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| For the most part the library can get by with around 20KB of stack and about 32KB of heap even if you use the
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| public key functions.  If all you plan on using are the hashes and ciphers than only about 1KB of stack is required
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| and no heap.
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| 
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| To save space all of the symmetric key scheduled keys are stored in a union called "symmetric_key".  This means the 
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| size of a symmetric_key is the size of the largest scheduled key.  By removing the ciphers you don't use from
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| the build you can minimize the size of this structure.  For instance, by removing both Twofish and Blowfish the
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| size reduces to 768 bytes from the 4,256 bytes it would have been (on a 32-bit platform).  Or if you remove
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| Blowfish and use Twofish with TWOFISH_SMALL defined its still 768 bytes.  Even at its largest the structure is only 
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| 4KB which is normally not a problem for any platform.  
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| 
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| 
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| Cipher Name | Size of scheduled key (bytes) |
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| ------------+-------------------------------|
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| Twofish     | 4,256                         |
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| Blowfish    | 4,168                         |
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| 3DES        | 768                           |
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| SAFER+      | 532                           |
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| Serpent     | 528                           |
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| Rijndael    | 516                           |
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| XTEA        | 256                           |
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| RC2         | 256                           |
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| DES         | 256                           |
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| SAFER [#]   | 217                           |
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| RC5         | 204                           |
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| Twofish [*] | 193                           |
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| RC6         | 176                           |
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| CAST5       | 132                           |
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| Noekeon     | 32                            |
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| Skipjack    | 10                            |
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| ------------+-------------------------------/
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| Memory used per cipher on a 32-bit platform.
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| 
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| [*] For Twofish with TWOFISH_SMALL defined
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| [#] For all 64-bit SAFER ciphers.
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| 
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| Noekeon is a fairly fast cipher and uses very little memory.  Ideally in low-ram platforms all other ciphers should be
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| left undefined and Noekeon should remain.  While Noekeon is generally considered a secure block cipher (it is insecure
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| as a hash) CAST5 is perhaps a "runner-up" choice.  CAST5 has been around longer (it is also known as CAST-128) and is 
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| fairly fast as well.
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| 
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| You can easily accomplish this via the "config.pl" script. Simply answer "n" to all of the ciphers except the one you want
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| and then rebuild the library.  [or you can hand edit mycrypt_custom.h]
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| 
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| 
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