For Crypto, Code Less, Compile Quicker and Execute Faster
The new scripted languages such as Python and Node.js are convenient. But, unfortunately, they can be slow as they are scripted, and not compiled. Each time the scripted code is run, the scripting engine must then convert each line of code to the required machine level code. This makes the code much slower than compiled languages, and also less robust.
Thus many applications in cryptography are written in C and C++, as they allow for fast execution and give low level access. Unfortunately it can be complex to compile programs, as we often need to install binary libraries and then link these in. The Go programming language, though, has a similar code syntax to C/C++, but is small and efficient and allows access to low-level functions, such as as pointers.
Go thus aims to “Code less, compile quicker, execute faster”.
So let’s use Go to implement some hashing functions, and implement compiled code for cryptography. An outline of the Go code is [here]:
package mainimport (
"crypto/rand"
"golang.org/x/crypto/md4"
"crypto/md5"
"crypto/sha1"
"crypto/sha256"
"crypto/sha512"
"golang.org/x/crypto/ripemd160"
"golang.org/x/crypto/sha3"
"golang.org/x/crypto/blake2b"
"golang.org/x/crypto/scrypt"
"golang.org/x/crypto/argon2"
"golang.org/x/crypto/bcrypt"
"fmt"…
