@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 SHA2, SHA3, RIPEMD, BLAKE2/3, HMAC, HKDF, PBKDF2 & Scrypt.

• noble family, zero dependencies
• 🔒 Audited by an independent security firm: no vulnerabilities have been found
• 🔻 Helps JS bundlers with lack of entry point, ensures small size of your app
• 🔁 No unrolled loops: makes it easier to verify and reduces source code size up to 5x
• 🏎 Ultra-fast, hand-optimized for caveats of JS engines
• 🔍 Unique tests ensure correctness: chained tests, sliding window tests, DoS tests
• 🧪 Differential fuzzing ensures even more correctness with cryptofuzz
• 🐢 Scrypt supports N: 2**22 with 4GB arrays, while other implementations crash on 2**21
• 🦘 SHA3 supports Keccak, TupleHash, KangarooTwelve and MarsupilamiFourteen
• 🪶 Just 2.8k lines / 14KB gzipped. SHA256-only is 240 lines / 3KB gzipped

The library's initial development was funded by Ethereum Foundation.

This library belongs to noble crypto

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

• No dependencies, small files
• Easily auditable TypeScript/JS code
• Supported in all major browsers and stable node.js versions
• All releases are signed with PGP keys
• Check out homepage & all libraries: secp256k1, ed25519, bls12-381, hashes

Usage

Use NPM in node.js / browser, or include single file from GitHub's releases page:

npm install @noble/hashes

The library does not have an entry point. It allows you to select specific primitives and drop everything else. If you only want to use sha256, just use the library with rollup or other bundlers. This is done to make your bundles tiny.

// Common.js and ECMAScript Modules (ESM)
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha256';
console.log(sha256(new Uint8Array([1, 2, 3])));
// Uint8Array(32) [3, 144,  88, 198, 242, 192, 203,  73, ...]

// you could also pass strings that will be UTF8-encoded to Uint8Array
console.log(sha256('abc'))); // == sha256(new TextEncoder().encode('abc'))

// sha384 is here, because it uses same internals as sha512
const { sha512, sha512_256, sha384 } = require('@noble/hashes/sha512');
// prettier-ignore
const {
  sha3_224, sha3_256, sha3_384, sha3_512,
  keccak_224, keccak_256, keccak_384, keccak_512,
  shake128, shake256
} = require('@noble/hashes/sha3');
// prettier-ignore
const {
  cshake128, cshake256, kmac128, kmac256,
  k12, m14,
  tuplehash256, parallelhash256, keccakprg
} = require('@noble/hashes/sha3-addons');
const { ripemd160 } = require('@noble/hashes/ripemd160');
const { blake3 } = require('@noble/hashes/blake3');
const { blake2b } = require('@noble/hashes/blake2b');
const { blake2s } = require('@noble/hashes/blake2s');
const { hmac } = require('@noble/hashes/hmac');
const { hkdf } = require('@noble/hashes/hkdf');
const { pbkdf2, pbkdf2Async } = require('@noble/hashes/pbkdf2');
const { scrypt, scryptAsync } = require('@noble/hashes/scrypt');

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

API

All hash functions:

• can be called directly, with Uint8Array.
• return Uint8Array
• can receive string, which is automatically converted to Uint8Array via utf8 encoding (not hex)
• support hashing 4GB of data per update on 64-bit systems (unlimited with streaming)

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 })

Modules

• SHA2 (sha256, sha384, sha512, sha512_256)
• SHA3 (FIPS, SHAKE, Keccak)
• SHA3 Addons (cSHAKE, KMAC, KangarooTwelve, MarsupilamiFourteen)
• RIPEMD-160
• BLAKE2b, BLAKE2s
• BLAKE3
• HMAC
• HKDF
• PBKDF2
• Scrypt
• ESKDF
• utils

SHA2 (sha256, sha384, sha512, sha512_256)

import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha256';
const h1a = sha256('abc');
const h1b = sha256
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

import { sha512 } from '@noble/hashes/sha512';
const h2a = sha512('abc');
const h2b = sha512
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

// SHA512/256 variant
import { sha512_256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha512';
const h3a = sha512_256('abc');
const h3b = sha512_256
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

// SHA384
import { sha384 } from '@noble/hashes/sha512';
const h4a = sha384('abc');
const h4b = sha384
  .create()
  .update(Uint8Array.from([1, 2, 3]))
  .digest();

See RFC 4634 and the paper on 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, TupleHash, ParallelHash, KangarooTwelve, MarsupilamiFourteen)

import {
  cshake128,
  cshake256,
  kmac128,
  kmac256,
  k12,
  m14,
  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 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
• 🦘 K12 (KangarooTwelve Paper, RFC Draft) and M14 aka MarsupilamiFourteen are basically parallel versions of Keccak with reduced number of rounds (same as Blake3 and ParallelHash).
• KeccakPRG: Pseudo-random generator based on Keccak

RIPEMD-160

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

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

See RFC 7693, Website.

BLAKE3

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

See Website.

HMAC

import { hmac } from '@noble/hashes/hmac';
import { sha256 } from '@noble/hashes/sha256';
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/sha256';
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/sha256';
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/sha256';
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 ** 22,
  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)
});

Matches RFC 7914, Website

• N, r, p are work factors. To understand them, see the blog post.
• dkLen is the length of output bytes
• It is common to use N from 2**10 to 2**22 and {r: 8, p: 1, dkLen: 32}
• onProgress can be used with async version of the function to report progress to a user.

Memory usage of scrypt is calculated with the formula N * r * p * 128 + (128 * r * p), which means {N: 2 ** 22, r: 8, p: 1} will use 4GB + 1KB of memory. To prevent DoS, we limit scrypt to 1GB + 1KB of RAM used, which corresponds to {N: 2 ** 20, r: 8, p: 1}. If you want to use higher values, increase maxmem using the formula above.

Note: noble supports 2**22 (4GB RAM) which is the highest amount amongst JS libs. Many other implementations don't support it. We cannot support 2**23, because there is a limitation in JS engines that makes allocating arrays bigger than 4GB impossible, but we're looking into other possible solutions.

ESKDF

A tiny stretched KDF for various applications like AES key-gen. Takes >= 2 seconds to execute.

Takes following params:

• username - username, email, or identifier, min: 8 characters, should have enough entropy
• password - min: 8 characters, should have enough entropy

Produces ESKDF instance that has deriveChildKey(protocol, accountId, keyLength) function.

• protocol - 3-15 character protocol name
• accountId - numeric identifier of account
• keyLength - (default: 32) key length

Takes username and password, then takes protocol name and account id.

import { eskdf } from '@noble/hashes/eskdf';
const kdf = await eskdf('example-university', 'beginning-new-example');
const key = kdf.deriveChildKey('aes', 0);
console.log(kdf.fingerprint);
kdf.expire();

utils

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

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

Security

Noble is production-ready.

1. The library has been audited on Jan 5, 2022 by an independent security firm cure53: PDF. No vulnerabilities have been found. The audit has been funded by Ethereum Foundation with help of Nomic Labs. Modules blake3 and sha3-addons have not been audited.
2. The library has been fuzzed by Guido Vranken's cryptofuzz. You can run the fuzzer by yourself to check it.
3. Timing attack considerations: JIT-compiler and Garbage Collector make "constant time" extremely hard to achieve 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.
4. Memory dump considerations: 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

We consider infrastructure attacks like rogue NPM modules very important; that's why it's crucial to minimize the amount of 3rd-party dependencies & native bindings. If your app uses 500 dependencies, any dep could get hacked and you'll be downloading malware with every npm install. Our goal is to minimize this attack vector.

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 1,126,126 ops/sec @ 888ns/op
SHA384 32B x 463,606 ops/sec @ 2μs/op
SHA512 32B x 467,945 ops/sec @ 2μs/op
SHA3-256, keccak256, shake256 32B x 184,026 ops/sec @ 5μs/op
Kangaroo12 32B x 312,891 ops/sec @ 3μs/op
Marsupilami14 32B x 278,164 ops/sec @ 3μs/op
BLAKE2b 32B x 297,353 ops/sec @ 3μs/op
BLAKE2s 32B x 507,614 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
BLAKE3 32B x 591,016 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
RIPEMD160 32B x 1,230,012 ops/sec @ 813ns/op
HMAC-SHA256 32B x 346,860 ops/sec @ 2μs/op
HKDF-SHA256 32B x 153,397 ops/sec @ 6μs/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 @ 636ms/op

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

SHA256 32B native x 1,164,144 ops/sec @ 859ns/op
SHA384 32B native x 938,086 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
SHA512 32B native x 946,969 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
SHA3 32B native x 879,507 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
keccak, k12, m14 are not implemented
BLAKE2b 32B native x 879,507 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
BLAKE2s 32B native x 977,517 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
BLAKE3 is not implemented
RIPEMD160 32B native x 913,242 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
HMAC-SHA256 32B native x 755,287 ops/sec @ 1μs/op
HKDF-SHA256 32B native x 207,856 ops/sec @ 4μs/op
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 262144 native x 23 ops/sec @ 42ms/op
Scrypt 262144 native x 1 ops/sec @ 564ms/op
Scrypt 262144 scrypt.js x 0 ops/sec @ 1678ms/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.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

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

See LICENSE file.