cryptic

SHA1, SHA2 and BASE64 algorithms implemented as C++23 modules.

Building

The project uses tester for testing and C++ Builder (CB.sh) for building. To build and run tests:

./tools/CB.sh test

Additional Compiler Flags

You can add extra compiler flags using the -X or --extra-flags option:

./tools/CB.sh -X "-march=native -funroll-loops" release build
./tools/CB.sh --extra-flags "-march=native" release test

Usage

Import the cryptic module and use the algorithms:

Example #1 - SHA1 Base64

import std;
import cryptic;

auto test1 = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"s;
std::cout << cryptic::sha1::base64(test1) << std::endl;

Example #2 - SHA256 Hexadecimal

import std;
import cryptic;

auto test2 = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"s;
std::cout << cryptic::sha256::hexadecimal(test2) << std::endl;

Example #3 - Base64 Encode

import std;
import cryptic;

auto test3 = cryptic::base64::encode("Man"s);
std::cout << test3 << std::endl;

Example #4 - Base64 Decode

import std;
import cryptic;

auto test4 = cryptic::base64::decode(test3);
std::cout << test4 << std::endl;

Benchmark

The project includes a performance benchmark comparing cryptic implementations against OpenSSL's EVP API. The benchmark tests SHA1 and SHA256 algorithms across different message sizes.

Running the Benchmark

Build and run the benchmark in release mode:

./tools/CB.sh release test
./build-darwin-release/bin/benchmark

Benchmark Results

The benchmark tests three message sizes (small: 43 bytes, medium: 782 bytes, large: 8294 bytes) with 100,000 iterations per test. Results show:

SHA1 Performance:

• Small messages: cryptic is ~2.5-3.6x faster than OpenSSL
• Medium messages: OpenSSL is ~2.3-2.4x faster than cryptic
• Large messages: OpenSSL is ~3.5-3.6x faster than cryptic

SHA256 Performance:

• Small messages: cryptic is ~1.1-1.5x faster than OpenSSL
• Medium messages: OpenSSL is ~5.3-5.4x faster than cryptic
• Large messages: OpenSSL is ~8.0-8.1x faster than cryptic

Notes

• The benchmark uses OpenSSL 3.0's modern EVP API for fair comparison
• cryptic performs best on small messages, making it suitable for applications that primarily hash short strings
• For large message hashing, OpenSSL's optimized implementations show significant performance advantages
• The benchmark uses realistic, varied test data rather than repetitive patterns

Optimizations

Recent optimizations include:

• Loop unrolling: Extensive unrolling of word loading, expansion, and compression loops
• Compiler hints: Hot function attributes and always-inline hints for critical paths
• Small message optimization: Special-casing for single-chunk messages to avoid loop overhead
• Memory access patterns: Prefetching, restrict pointers, and cache-aligned data structures
• Template-based unrolling: Compile-time unrolling of hexadecimal encoding loops