@noble/hashes

What is @noble/hashes?

The @noble/hashes npm package provides a collection of cryptographic hash functions implemented in pure JavaScript with a focus on security and performance. It is part of the noble family of packages, which are designed to be secure, efficient, and easy to use.

What are @noble/hashes's main functionalities?

SHA-256 Hashing

This feature allows you to compute the SHA-256 hash of an input. The code sample demonstrates how to hash a Uint8Array of bytes and print the resulting hash as a hex string.

"use strict";
const { sha256 } = require('@noble/hashes/sha256');
const hash = sha256(new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3]));
console.log(Buffer.from(hash).toString('hex'));

SHA-1 Hashing

This feature enables SHA-1 hashing. The code sample shows how to hash a Uint8Array and output the hash in hexadecimal format.

"use strict";
const { sha1 } = require('@noble/hashes/sha1');
const hash = sha1(new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3]));
console.log(Buffer.from(hash).toString('hex'));

RIPEMD-160 Hashing

This feature provides RIPEMD-160 hashing capability. The code sample illustrates hashing a byte array and converting the hash to a hex string.

"use strict";
const { ripemd160 } = require('@noble/hashes/ripemd160');
const hash = ripemd160(new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3]));
console.log(Buffer.from(hash).toString('hex'));

HMAC

This feature allows for the creation of HMACs (Hash-based Message Authentication Codes) using a specified hash function. The code sample demonstrates creating an HMAC with SHA-256.

"use strict";
const { hmac } = require('@noble/hashes/hmac');
const { sha256 } = require('@noble/hashes/sha256');
const key = new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]);
const message = new Uint8Array([6, 7, 8, 9, 0]);
const signature = hmac(sha256, key, message);
console.log(Buffer.from(signature).toString('hex'));

Other packages similar to @noble/hashes

crypto-js

Crypto-js is a popular package that provides a variety of cryptographic algorithms including hash functions, HMAC, and encryption. It is similar to @noble/hashes but has a broader scope, including encryption and decryption methods.

hash.js

Hash.js is a lightweight library of hash functions that includes implementations of SHA-1, SHA-256, and RIPEMD. It is similar to @noble/hashes in providing hash functions but is not as focused on security and performance.

sha.js

Sha.js is a simple module that only implements SHA hash functions. It is similar to @noble/hashes in providing SHA hashing but does not include other hash functions like RIPEMD-160 or HMAC capabilities.

README

noble-hashes

Audited & minimal JS implementation of hash functions, MACs and KDFs.

• 🔒 Audited by an independent security firm
• 🔻 Tree-shakeable: unused code is excluded from your builds
• 🏎 Fast: hand-optimized for caveats of JS engines
• 🔍 Reliable: chained / sliding window / DoS tests and fuzzing ensure correctness
• 🔁 No unrolled loops: makes it easier to verify and reduces source code size up to 5x
• 🦘 Includes SHA, RIPEMD, BLAKE, HMAC, HKDF, PBKDF, Scrypt, Argon2 & KangarooTwelve
• 🪶 47KB for everything, 5KB (2.5KB gzipped) for single-hash build

Take a glance at GitHub Discussions for questions and support. The library's initial development was funded by Ethereum Foundation.

This library belongs to noble cryptography

noble cryptography — high-security, easily auditable set of contained cryptographic libraries and tools.

• Zero or minimal dependencies
• Highly readable TypeScript / JS code
• PGP-signed releases and transparent NPM builds
• All libraries: ciphers, curves, hashes, post-quantum, 4kb secp256k1 / ed25519
• Check out homepage for reading resources, documentation and apps built with noble

Usage

npm install @noble/hashes

We support all major platforms and runtimes. For Deno, ensure to use npm specifier. For React Native, you may need a polyfill for getRandomValues. A standalone file noble-hashes.js is also available.

// import * from '@noble/hashes'; // Error: use sub-imports, to ensure small app size
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2'; // ECMAScript modules (ESM) and Common.js
// import { sha256 } from 'npm:@noble/hashes@1.3.0/sha2'; // Deno
console.log(sha256(new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3]))); // Uint8Array(32) [3, 144, 88, 198, 242...]
// you could also pass strings that will be UTF8-encoded to Uint8Array
console.log(sha256('abc')); // == sha256(new TextEncoder().encode('abc'))

• Implementations
  • sha2: sha256, sha384, sha512 and others
  • sha3: FIPS, SHAKE, Keccak
  • sha3-addons: cSHAKE, KMAC, K12, M14, TurboSHAKE
  • ripemd160
  • blake2b, blake2s, blake3
  • sha1: legacy hash
  • hmac
  • hkdf
  • pbkdf2
  • scrypt
  • argon2
  • utils
  • All available imports
• Security
  • Constant-timeness
  • Memory dumping
  • Supply chain security
  • Randomness
• Speed
• Contributing & testing
• Resources
• License

Implementations

All hash functions:

• receive Uint8Array and return Uint8Array
• may receive string, which is automatically converted to Uint8Array via utf8 encoding (not hex)
• support little-endian and big-endian architectures
• can hash up to 4GB per chunk, with any amount of chunks

function hash(message: Uint8Array | string): Uint8Array;
hash(new Uint8Array([1, 3]));
hash('string') == hash(new TextEncoder().encode('string'));

All hash functions can be constructed via hash.create() method:

• the result is Hash subclass instance, which has update() and digest() methods
• digest() finalizes the hash and makes it no longer usable

hash
  .create()
  .update(new Uint8Array([1, 3]))
  .digest();

Some hash functions can also receive options object, which can be either passed as a:

• second argument to hash function: blake3('abc', { key: 'd', dkLen: 32 })
• first argument to class initializer: blake3.create({ context: 'e', dkLen: 32 })

sha2: sha256, sha384, sha512 and others

import { sha256, sha384, sha512, sha224, sha512_256, sha512_384 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2';
// also available as aliases:
// import ... from '@noble/hashes/sha256'
// import ... from '@noble/hashes/sha512'

// Variant A:
const h1a = sha256('abc');

// Variant B:
const h1b = sha256
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

for (let hash of [sha384, sha512, sha224, sha512_256, sha512_384]) {
  const res1 = hash('abc');
  const res2 = hash
    .create()
    .update('def')
    .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
    .digest();
}

See RFC 4634 and the paper on truncated SHA512/256.

sha3: FIPS, SHAKE, Keccak

import {
  sha3_224,
  sha3_256,
  sha3_384,
  sha3_512,
  keccak_224,
  keccak_256,
  keccak_384,
  keccak_512,
  shake128,
  shake256,
} from '@noble/hashes/sha3';
const h5a = sha3_256('abc');
const h5b = sha3_256
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();
const h6a = keccak_256('abc');
const h7a = shake128('abc', { dkLen: 512 });
const h7b = shake256('abc', { dkLen: 512 });

See FIPS PUB 202, Website.

Check out the differences between SHA-3 and Keccak

sha3-addons: cSHAKE, KMAC, K12, M14, TurboSHAKE

import {
  cshake128,
  cshake256,
  kmac128,
  kmac256,
  k12,
  m14,
  turboshake128,
  turboshake256,
  tuplehash128,
  tuplehash256,
  parallelhash128,
  parallelhash256,
  keccakprg,
} from '@noble/hashes/sha3-addons';
const h7c = cshake128('abc', { personalization: 'def' });
const h7d = cshake256('abc', { personalization: 'def' });
const h7e = kmac128('key', 'message');
const h7f = kmac256('key', 'message');
const h7h = k12('abc');
const h7g = m14('abc');
const h7t1 = turboshake128('abc');
const h7t2 = turboshake256('def', { D: 0x05 });
const h7i = tuplehash128(['ab', 'c']); // tuplehash(['ab', 'c']) !== tuplehash(['a', 'bc']) !== tuplehash(['abc'])
// Same as k12/blake3, but without reduced number of rounds. Doesn't speedup anything due lack of SIMD and threading,
// added for compatibility.
const h7j = parallelhash128('abc', { blockLen: 8 });
// pseudo-random generator, first argument is capacity. XKCP recommends 254 bits capacity for 128-bit security strength.
// * with a capacity of 254 bits.
const p = keccakprg(254);
p.feed('test');
const rand1b = p.fetch(1);

• Full NIST SP 800-185: cSHAKE, KMAC, TupleHash, ParallelHash + XOF variants
• Reduced-round Keccak:
  • 🦘 K12 aka KangarooTwelve
  • M14 aka MarsupilamiFourteen
  • TurboSHAKE
• KeccakPRG: Pseudo-random generator based on Keccak

ripemd160

import { ripemd160 } from '@noble/hashes/ripemd160';
// function ripemd160(data: Uint8Array): Uint8Array;
const hash8 = ripemd160('abc');
const hash9 = ripemd160
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

See RFC 2286, Website

blake2b, blake2s, blake3

import { blake2b } from '@noble/hashes/blake2b';
import { blake2s } from '@noble/hashes/blake2s';
import { blake3 } from '@noble/hashes/blake3';

const h10a = blake2s('abc');
const b2params = { key: new Uint8Array([1]), personalization: t, salt: t, dkLen: 32 };
const h10b = blake2s('abc', b2params);
const h10c = blake2s
  .create(b2params)
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

// All params are optional
const h11 = blake3('abc', { dkLen: 256, key: 'def', context: 'fji' });

See RFC 7693, Website.

sha1: legacy hash

SHA1 was cryptographically broken, however, it was not broken for cases like HMAC.

See RFC4226 B.2.

Don't use it for a new protocol.

import { sha1 } from '@noble/hashes/sha1';
const h12 = sha1('def');

hmac

import { hmac } from '@noble/hashes/hmac';
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2';
const mac1 = hmac(sha256, 'key', 'message');
const mac2 = hmac
  .create(sha256, Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .update(Uint8Array.from([4, 5, 6]))
  .digest();

Matches RFC 2104.

hkdf

import { hkdf } from '@noble/hashes/hkdf';
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2';
import { randomBytes } from '@noble/hashes/utils';
const inputKey = randomBytes(32);
const salt = randomBytes(32);
const info = 'abc';
const dkLen = 32;
const hk1 = hkdf(sha256, inputKey, salt, info, dkLen);

// == same as
import * as hkdf from '@noble/hashes/hkdf';
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2';
const prk = hkdf.extract(sha256, inputKey, salt);
const hk2 = hkdf.expand(sha256, prk, info, dkLen);

Matches RFC 5869.

pbkdf2

import { pbkdf2, pbkdf2Async } from '@noble/hashes/pbkdf2';
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2';
const pbkey1 = pbkdf2(sha256, 'password', 'salt', { c: 32, dkLen: 32 });
const pbkey2 = await pbkdf2Async(sha256, 'password', 'salt', { c: 32, dkLen: 32 });
const pbkey3 = await pbkdf2Async(sha256, Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]), Uint8Array.from([4, 5, 6]), {
  c: 32,
  dkLen: 32,
});

Matches RFC 2898.

scrypt

import { scrypt, scryptAsync } from '@noble/hashes/scrypt';
const scr1 = scrypt('password', 'salt', { N: 2 ** 16, r: 8, p: 1, dkLen: 32 });
const scr2 = await scryptAsync('password', 'salt', { N: 2 ** 16, r: 8, p: 1, dkLen: 32 });
const scr3 = await scryptAsync(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]), Uint8Array.from([4, 5, 6]), {
  N: 2 ** 17,
  r: 8,
  p: 1,
  dkLen: 32,
  onProgress(percentage) {
    console.log('progress', percentage);
  },
  maxmem: 2 ** 32 + 128 * 8 * 1, // N * r * p * 128 + (128*r*p)
});

Conforms to RFC 7914, Website

• N, r, p are work factors. To understand them, see the blog post. r: 8, p: 1 are common. JS doesn't support parallelization, making increasing p meaningless.
• dkLen is the length of output bytes e.g. 32 or 64
• onProgress can be used with async version of the function to report progress to a user.
• maxmem prevents DoS and is limited to 1GB + 1KB (2**30 + 2**10), but can be adjusted using formula: N * r * p * 128 + (128 * r * p)

Time it takes to derive Scrypt key under different values of N (2**N) on Apple M2 (mobile phones can be 1x-4x slower):

N pow	Time
16	0.17s
17	0.35s
18	0.7s
19	1.4s
20	2.9s
21	5.6s
22	11s
23	26s
24	56s

[!NOTE] We support N larger than 2**20 where available, however, not all JS engines support >= 2GB ArrayBuffer-s. When using such N, you'll need to manually adjust maxmem, using formula above. Other JS implementations don't support large N-s.

argon2

import { argon2d, argon2i, argon2id } from '@noble/hashes/argon2';
const result = argon2id('password', 'saltsalt', { t: 2, m: 65536, p: 1, maxmem: 2 ** 32 - 1 });

Argon2 RFC 9106 implementation.

[!WARNING] Argon2 can't be fast in JS, because there is no fast Uint64Array. It is suggested to use Scrypt instead. Being 5x slower than native code means brute-forcing attackers have bigger advantage.

utils

import { bytesToHex as toHex, randomBytes } from '@noble/hashes/utils';
console.log(toHex(randomBytes(32)));

• bytesToHex will convert Uint8Array to a hex string
• randomBytes(bytes) will produce cryptographically secure random Uint8Array of length bytes

All available imports

import { sha256, sha384, sha512, sha224, sha512_256, sha512_384 } from '@noble/hashes/sha2';
// prettier-ignore
import {
  sha3_224, sha3_256, sha3_384, sha3_512,
  keccak_224, keccak_256, keccak_384, keccak_512,
  shake128, shake256
} from '@noble/hashes/sha3';
// prettier-ignore
import {
  cshake128, cshake256,
  turboshake128, turboshake256,
  kmac128, kmac256,
  tuplehash256, parallelhash256,
  k12, m14, keccakprg
} from '@noble/hashes/sha3-addons';
import { ripemd160 } from '@noble/hashes/ripemd160';
import { blake3 } from '@noble/hashes/blake3';
import { blake2b } from '@noble/hashes/blake2b';
import { blake2s } from '@noble/hashes/blake2s';
import { hmac } from '@noble/hashes/hmac';
import { hkdf } from '@noble/hashes/hkdf';
import { pbkdf2, pbkdf2Async } from '@noble/hashes/pbkdf2';
import { scrypt, scryptAsync } from '@noble/hashes/scrypt';

import { sha1 } from '@noble/hashes/sha1'; // legacy

// small utility method that converts bytes to hex
import { bytesToHex as toHex } from '@noble/hashes/utils';
console.log(toHex(sha256('abc'))); // ba7816bf8f01cfea414140de5dae2223b00361a396177a9cb410ff61f20015ad

Security

The library has been independently audited:

• at version 1.0.0, in Jan 2022, by Cure53
  • PDFs: website, in-repo
  • Changes since audit.
  • Scope: everything, besides blake3, sha3-addons, sha1 and argon2, which have not been audited
  • The audit has been funded by Ethereum Foundation with help of Nomic Labs

It is tested against property-based, cross-library and Wycheproof vectors, and has fuzzing by Guido Vranken's cryptofuzz.

If you see anything unusual: investigate and report.

Constant-timeness

JIT-compiler and Garbage Collector make "constant time" extremely hard to achieve timing attack resistance in a scripting language. Which means any other JS library can't have constant-timeness. Even statically typed Rust, a language without GC, makes it harder to achieve constant-time for some cases. If your goal is absolute security, don't use any JS lib — including bindings to native ones. Use low-level libraries & languages. Nonetheless we're targetting algorithmic constant time.

Memory dumping

The library shares state buffers between hash function calls. The buffers are zeroed-out after each call. However, if an attacker can read application memory, you are doomed in any case:

• At some point, input will be a string and strings are immutable in JS: there is no way to overwrite them with zeros. For example: deriving key from scrypt(password, salt) where password and salt are strings
• Input from a file will stay in file buffers
• Input / output will be re-used multiple times in application which means it could stay in memory
• await anything() will always write all internal variables (including numbers) to memory. With async functions / Promises there are no guarantees when the code chunk would be executed. Which means attacker can have plenty of time to read data from memory
• There is no way to guarantee anything about zeroing sensitive data without complex tests-suite which will dump process memory and verify that there is no sensitive data left. For JS it means testing all browsers (incl. mobile), which is complex. And of course it will be useless without using the same test-suite in the actual application that consumes the library

Supply chain security

• Commits are signed with PGP keys, to prevent forgery. Make sure to verify commit signatures.
• Releases are transparent and built on GitHub CI. Make sure to verify provenance logs
• Rare releasing is followed to ensure less re-audit need for end-users
• Dependencies are minimized and locked-down:
  • If your app has 500 dependencies, any dep could get hacked and you'll be downloading malware with every install. We make sure to use as few dependencies as possible
  • We prevent automatic dependency updates by locking-down version ranges. Every update is checked with npm-diff
• Dev Dependencies are only used if you want to contribute to the repo. They are disabled for end-users:
  • scure-base, scure-bip32, scure-bip39, micro-bmark and micro-should are developed by the same author and follow identical security practices
  • prettier (linter), fast-check (property-based testing) and typescript are used for code quality, vector generation and ts compilation. The packages are big, which makes it hard to audit their source code thoroughly and fully

Randomness

We're deferring to built-in crypto.getRandomValues which is considered cryptographically secure (CSPRNG).

In the past, browsers had bugs that made it weak: it may happen again. Implementing a userspace CSPRNG to get resilient to the weakness is even worse: there is no reliable userspace source of quality entropy.

Speed

Benchmarks measured on Apple M1 with macOS 12. Note that PBKDF2 and Scrypt are tested with extremely high work factor. To run benchmarks, execute npm run bench:install and then npm run bench

SHA256 32B x 1,219,512 ops/sec @ 820ns/op ± 2.58% (min: 625ns, max: 4ms)
SHA384 32B x 512,032 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
SHA512 32B x 509,943 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
SHA3-256, keccak256, shake256 32B x 199,600 ops/sec @ 5μs/op
Kangaroo12 32B x 336,360 ops/sec @ 2μs/op
Marsupilami14 32B x 298,418 ops/sec @ 3μs/op
BLAKE2b 32B x 379,794 ops/sec @ 2μs/op
BLAKE2s 32B x 515,995 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 1.07% (min: 1μs, max: 4ms)
BLAKE3 32B x 588,235 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 1.36% (min: 1μs, max: 5ms)
RIPEMD160 32B x 1,140,250 ops/sec @ 877ns/op ± 3.12% (min: 708ns, max: 6ms)
HMAC-SHA256 32B x 377,358 ops/sec @ 2μs/op

HKDF-SHA256 32B x 108,377 ops/sec @ 9μs/op
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 262144 x 3 ops/sec @ 326ms/op
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512 262144 x 1 ops/sec @ 970ms/op
Scrypt r: 8, p: 1, n: 262144 x 1 ops/sec @ 616ms/op

Compare to native node.js implementation that uses C bindings instead of pure-js code:

SHA256 32B node x 1,302,083 ops/sec @ 768ns/op ± 10.54% (min: 416ns, max: 7ms)
SHA384 32B node x 975,609 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 11.32% (min: 625ns, max: 8ms)
SHA512 32B node x 983,284 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 11.24% (min: 625ns, max: 8ms)
SHA3-256 32B node x 910,746 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 12.19% (min: 666ns, max: 10ms)
keccak, k12, m14 are not implemented
BLAKE2b 32B node x 967,117 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 11.26% (min: 625ns, max: 9ms)
BLAKE2s 32B node x 1,055,966 ops/sec @ 947ns/op ± 11.07% (min: 583ns, max: 7ms)
BLAKE3 is not implemented
RIPEMD160 32B node x 1,002,004 ops/sec @ 998ns/op ± 10.66% (min: 625ns, max: 7ms)
HMAC-SHA256 32B node x 919,963 ops/sec @ 1μs/op ± 6.13% (min: 833ns, max: 5ms)
HKDF-SHA256 32 node x 369,276 ops/sec @ 2μs/op ± 13.59% (min: 1μs, max: 9ms)
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 262144 node x 25 ops/sec @ 39ms/op
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512 262144 node x 7 ops/sec @ 132ms/op
Scrypt r: 8, p: 1, n: 262144 node x 1 ops/sec @ 523ms/op

It is possible to make this library 4x+ faster by doing code generation of full loop unrolls. We've decided against it. Reasons:

• the library must be auditable, with minimum amount of code, and zero dependencies
• most method invocations with the lib are going to be something like hashing 32b to 64kb of data
• hashing big inputs is 10x faster with low-level languages, which means you should probably pick 'em instead

The current performance is good enough when compared to other projects; SHA256 takes only 900 nanoseconds to run.

Contributing & testing

1. Clone the repository
2. npm install to install build dependencies like TypeScript
3. npm run build to compile TypeScript code
4. npm run test will execute all main tests. See our approach to testing
5. npm run test:dos will test against DoS; by measuring function complexity. Takes ~20 minutes
6. npm run test:big will execute hashing on 4GB inputs, scrypt with 1024 different N, r, p combinations, etc. Takes several hours. Using 8-32+ core CPU helps.
7. npm run format will fix lint issues

test/misc directory contains implementations of loop unrolling and md5.

Resources

Check out paulmillr.com/noble for useful resources, articles, documentation and demos related to the library.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2022 Paul Miller (https://paulmillr.com)

See LICENSE file.