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+
+TinyCrypt Cryptographic Library
+###############################
+Copyright (C) 2017 by Intel Corporation, All Rights Reserved.
+
+Overview
+********
+The TinyCrypt Library provides an implementation for targeting constrained devices
+with a minimal set of standard cryptography primitives, as listed below. To better
+serve applications targeting constrained devices, TinyCrypt implementations differ
+from the standard specifications (see the Important Remarks section for some
+important differences). Certain cryptographic primitives depend on other
+primitives, as mentioned in the list below.
+
+Aside from the Important Remarks section below, valuable information on the usage,
+security and technicalities of each cryptographic primitive are found in the
+corresponding header file.
+
+* SHA-256:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Hash function.
+ * Standard Specification: NIST FIPS PUB 180-4.
+ * Requires: --
+
+* HMAC-SHA256:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Message authentication code.
+ * Standard Specification: RFC 2104.
+ * Requires: SHA-256
+
+* HMAC-PRNG:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Pseudo-random number generator (256-bit strength).
+ * Standard Specification: NIST SP 800-90A.
+ * Requires: SHA-256 and HMAC-SHA256.
+
+* AES-128:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Block cipher.
+ * Standard Specification: NIST FIPS PUB 197.
+ * Requires: --
+
+* AES-CBC mode:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Encryption mode of operation.
+ * Standard Specification: NIST SP 800-38A.
+ * Requires: AES-128.
+
+* AES-CTR mode:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Encryption mode of operation.
+ * Standard Specification: NIST SP 800-38A.
+ * Requires: AES-128.
+
+* AES-CMAC mode:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Message authentication code.
+ * Standard Specification: NIST SP 800-38B.
+ * Requires: AES-128.
+
+* AES-CCM mode:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Authenticated encryption.
+ * Standard Specification: NIST SP 800-38C.
+ * Requires: AES-128.
+
+* CTR-PRNG:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Pseudo-random number generator (128-bit strength).
+ * Standard Specification: NIST SP 800-90A.
+ * Requires: AES-128.
+
+* ECC-DH:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Key exchange based on curve NIST p-256.
+ * Standard Specification: RFC 6090.
+ * Requires: ECC auxiliary functions (ecc.h/c).
+
+* ECC-DSA:
+
+ * Type of primitive: Digital signature based on curve NIST p-256.
+ * Standard Specification: RFC 6090.
+ * Requires: ECC auxiliary functions (ecc.h/c).
+
+Design Goals
+************
+
+* Minimize the code size of each cryptographic primitive. This means minimize
+ the size of a platform-independent implementation, as presented in TinyCrypt.
+ Note that various applications may require further features, optimizations with
+ respect to other metrics and countermeasures for particular threats. These
+ peculiarities would increase the code size and thus are not considered here.
+
+* Minimize the dependencies among the cryptographic primitives. This means
+ that it is unnecessary to build and allocate object code for more primitives
+ than the ones strictly required by the intended application. In other words,
+ one can select and compile only the primitives required by the application.
+
+
+Important Remarks
+*****************
+
+The cryptographic implementations in TinyCrypt library have some limitations.
+Some of these limitations are inherent to the cryptographic primitives
+themselves, while others are specific to TinyCrypt. These limitations were accepted
+in order to meet its design goals (in special, minimal code size) and to better
+serve applications targeting constrained devices in general. Some of these
+limitations are discussed in-depth below.
+
+General Remarks
+***************
+
+* TinyCrypt does **not** intend to be fully side-channel resistant. Due to the
+ variety of side-channel attacks, many of them only relevant to certain
+ platforms. In this sense, instead of penalizing all library users with
+ side-channel countermeasures such as increasing the overall code size,
+ TinyCrypt only implements certain generic timing-attack countermeasures.
+
+Specific Remarks
+****************
+
+* SHA-256:
+
+ * The number of bits_hashed in the state is not checked for overflow. Note
+ however that this will only be a problem if you intend to hash more than
+ 2^64 bits, which is an extremely large window.
+
+* HMAC:
+
+ * The HMAC verification process is assumed to be performed by the application.
+ This compares the computed tag with some given tag.
+ Note that conventional memory-comparison methods (such as memcmp function)
+ might be vulnerable to timing attacks; thus be sure to use a constant-time
+ memory comparison function (such as compare_constant_time
+ function provided in lib/utils.c).
+
+ * The tc_hmac_final function, responsible for computing the message tag,
+ cleans the state context before exiting. Thus, applications do not need to
+ clean the TCHmacState_t ctx after calling tc_hmac_final. This should not
+ be changed in future versions of the library as there are applications
+ currently relying on this good-practice/feature of TinyCrypt.
+
+* HMAC-PRNG:
+
+ * Before using HMAC-PRNG, you *must* find an entropy source to produce a seed.
+ PRNGs only stretch the seed into a seemingly random output of arbitrary
+ length. The security of the output is exactly equal to the
+ unpredictability of the seed.
+
+ * NIST SP 800-90A requires three items as seed material in the initialization
+ step: entropy seed, personalization and a nonce (which is not implemented).
+ TinyCrypt requires the personalization byte array and automatically creates
+ the entropy seed using a mandatory call to the re-seed function.
+
+* AES-128:
+
+ * The current implementation does not support other key-lengths (such as 256
+ bits). Note that if you need AES-256, it doesn't sound as though your
+ application is running in a constrained environment. AES-256 requires keys
+ twice the size as for AES-128, and the key schedule is 40% larger.
+
+* CTR mode:
+
+ * The AES-CTR mode limits the size of a data message they encrypt to 2^32
+ blocks. If you need to encrypt larger data sets, your application would
+ need to replace the key after 2^32 block encryptions.
+
+* CTR-PRNG:
+
+ * Before using CTR-PRNG, you *must* find an entropy source to produce a seed.
+ PRNGs only stretch the seed into a seemingly random output of arbitrary
+ length. The security of the output is exactly equal to the
+ unpredictability of the seed.
+
+* CBC mode:
+
+ * TinyCrypt CBC decryption assumes that the iv and the ciphertext are
+ contiguous (as produced by TinyCrypt CBC encryption). This allows for a
+ very efficient decryption algorithm that would not otherwise be possible.
+
+* CMAC mode:
+
+ * AES128-CMAC mode of operation offers 64 bits of security against collision
+ attacks. Note however that an external attacker cannot generate the tags
+ him/herself without knowing the MAC key. In this sense, to attack the
+ collision property of AES128-CMAC, an external attacker would need the
+ cooperation of the legal user to produce an exponentially high number of
+ tags (e.g. 2^64) to finally be able to look for collisions and benefit
+ from them. As an extra precaution, the current implementation allows to at
+ most 2^48 calls to tc_cmac_update function before re-calling tc_cmac_setup
+ (allowing a new key to be set), as suggested in Appendix B of SP 800-38B.
+
+* CCM mode:
+
+ * There are a few tradeoffs for the selection of the parameters of CCM mode.
+ In special, there is a tradeoff between the maximum number of invocations
+ of CCM under a given key and the maximum payload length for those
+ invocations. Both things are related to the parameter 'q' of CCM mode. The
+ maximum number of invocations of CCM under a given key is determined by
+ the nonce size, which is: 15-q bytes. The maximum payload length for those
+ invocations is defined as 2^(8q) bytes.
+
+ To achieve minimal code size, TinyCrypt CCM implementation fixes q = 2,
+ which is a quite reasonable choice for constrained applications. The
+ implications of this choice are:
+
+ The nonce size is: 13 bytes.
+
+ The maximum payload length is: 2^16 bytes = 65 KB.
+
+ The mac size parameter is an important parameter to estimate the security
+ against collision attacks (that aim at finding different messages that
+ produce the same authentication tag). TinyCrypt CCM implementation
+ accepts any even integer between 4 and 16, as suggested in SP 800-38C.
+
+ * TinyCrypt CCM implementation accepts associated data of any length between
+ 0 and (2^16 - 2^8) = 65280 bytes.
+
+ * TinyCrypt CCM implementation accepts:
+
+ * Both non-empty payload and associated data (it encrypts and
+ authenticates the payload and only authenticates the associated data);
+
+ * Non-empty payload and empty associated data (it encrypts and
+ authenticates the payload);
+
+ * Non-empty associated data and empty payload (it degenerates to an
+ authentication-only mode on the associated data).
+
+ * RFC-3610, which also specifies CCM, presents a few relevant security
+ suggestions, such as: it is recommended for most applications to use a
+ mac size greater than 8. Besides, it is emphasized that the usage of the
+ same nonce for two different messages which are encrypted with the same
+ key obviously destroys the security properties of CCM mode.
+
+* ECC-DH and ECC-DSA:
+
+ * TinyCrypt ECC implementation is based on micro-ecc (see
+ https://github.com/kmackay/micro-ecc). In the original micro-ecc
+ documentation, there is an important remark about the way integers are
+ represented:
+
+ "Integer representation: To reduce code size, all large integers are
+ represented using little-endian words - so the least significant word is
+ first. You can use the 'ecc_bytes2native()' and 'ecc_native2bytes()'
+ functions to convert between the native integer representation and the
+ standardized octet representation."
+
+ Note that the assumed bit layout is: {31, 30, ..., 0}, {63, 62, ..., 32},
+ {95, 94, ..., 64}, {127, 126, ..., 96} for a very-long-integer (vli)
+ consisting of 4 unsigned integers (as an example).
+
+ * A cryptographically-secure PRNG function must be set (using uECC_set_rng())
+ before calling uECC_make_key() or uECC_sign().
+
+Examples of Applications
+************************
+It is possible to do useful cryptography with only the given small set of
+primitives. With this list of primitives it becomes feasible to support a range
+of cryptography usages:
+
+ * Measurement of code, data structures, and other digital artifacts (SHA256);
+
+ * Generate commitments (SHA256);
+
+ * Construct keys (HMAC-SHA256);
+
+ * Extract entropy from strings containing some randomness (HMAC-SHA256);
+
+ * Construct random mappings (HMAC-SHA256);
+
+ * Construct nonces and challenges (HMAC-PRNG, CTR-PRNG);
+
+ * Authenticate using a shared secret (HMAC-SHA256);
+
+ * Create an authenticated, replay-protected session (HMAC-SHA256 + HMAC-PRNG);
+
+ * Authenticated encryption (AES-128 + AES-CCM);
+
+ * Key-exchange (EC-DH);
+
+ * Digital signature (EC-DSA);
+
+Test Vectors
+************
+
+The library provides a test program for each cryptographic primitive (see 'test'
+folder). Besides illustrating how to use the primitives, these tests evaluate
+the correctness of the implementations by checking the results against
+well-known publicly validated test vectors.
+
+For the case of the HMAC-PRNG, due to the necessity of performing an extensive
+battery test to produce meaningful conclusions, we suggest the user to evaluate
+the unpredictability of the implementation by using the NIST Statistical Test
+Suite (see References).
+
+For the case of the EC-DH and EC-DSA implementations, most of the test vectors
+were obtained from the site of the NIST Cryptographic Algorithm Validation
+Program (CAVP), see References.
+
+References
+**********
+
+* `NIST FIPS PUB 180-4 (SHA-256)`_
+
+.. _NIST FIPS PUB 180-4 (SHA-256):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-4/fips-180-4.pdf
+
+* `NIST FIPS PUB 197 (AES-128)`_
+
+.. _NIST FIPS PUB 197 (AES-128):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips197/fips-197.pdf
+
+* `NIST SP800-90A (HMAC-PRNG)`_
+
+.. _NIST SP800-90A (HMAC-PRNG):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-90A/SP800-90A.pdf
+
+* `NIST SP 800-38A (AES-CBC and AES-CTR)`_
+
+.. _NIST SP 800-38A (AES-CBC and AES-CTR):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-38a/sp800-38a.pdf
+
+* `NIST SP 800-38B (AES-CMAC)`_
+
+.. _NIST SP 800-38B (AES-CMAC):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-38B/SP_800-38B.pdf
+
+* `NIST SP 800-38C (AES-CCM)`_
+
+.. _NIST SP 800-38C (AES-CCM):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-38C/SP800-38C_updated-July20_2007.pdf
+
+* `NIST Statistical Test Suite (useful for testing HMAC-PRNG)`_
+
+.. _NIST Statistical Test Suite (useful for testing HMAC-PRNG):
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/documentation_software.html
+
+* `NIST Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP) site`_
+
+.. _NIST Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP) site:
+ http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/
+
+* `RFC 2104 (HMAC-SHA256)`_
+
+.. _RFC 2104 (HMAC-SHA256):
+ https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2104.txt
+
+* `RFC 6090 (ECC-DH and ECC-DSA)`_
+
+.. _RFC 6090 (ECC-DH and ECC-DSA):
+ https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc6090.txt