blakejs

What is blakejs?

The blakejs npm package provides JavaScript implementations of the BLAKE2b and BLAKE2s cryptographic hash functions. These hash functions are designed to be faster than MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-2, while providing a higher level of security. The package is useful for generating cryptographic hashes for data integrity, digital signatures, and other security-related applications.

What are blakejs's main functionalities?

BLAKE2b Hashing

This feature allows you to generate a BLAKE2b hash of a given input string. The example code demonstrates how to hash the string 'Hello, world!' and output the resulting hash in hexadecimal format.

const blake = require('blakejs');
const hash = blake.blake2bHex('Hello, world!');
console.log(hash);

BLAKE2s Hashing

This feature allows you to generate a BLAKE2s hash of a given input string. The example code demonstrates how to hash the string 'Hello, world!' and output the resulting hash in hexadecimal format.

const blake = require('blakejs');
const hash = blake.blake2sHex('Hello, world!');
console.log(hash);

Keyed Hashing

This feature allows you to generate a keyed BLAKE2b hash, which can be used for message authentication. The example code demonstrates how to hash the string 'Hello, world!' with a given key and output the resulting hash in hexadecimal format.

const blake = require('blakejs');
const key = new Uint8Array(32); // Example key
const hash = blake.blake2bHex('Hello, world!', key);
console.log(hash);

Other packages similar to blakejs

crypto-js

crypto-js is a widely-used library that provides a variety of cryptographic algorithms, including MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, and more. While it does not include BLAKE2b or BLAKE2s, it offers a broader range of cryptographic functions compared to blakejs.

hash.js

hash.js is a library that provides various hash functions, including SHA family algorithms. It does not support BLAKE2b or BLAKE2s, but it is known for its performance and ease of use in hashing operations.

blake2

blake2 is another npm package that provides implementations of the BLAKE2b and BLAKE2s hash functions. It is similar to blakejs but may have different performance characteristics and API design.

README

BLAKE.js

blake.js is a pure Javascript implementation of the BLAKE2b and BLAKE2s hash functions.

---

RFC 7693: The BLAKE Cryptographic Hash and MAC

BLAKE is the default family of hash functions in the venerable NaCl crypto library. Like SHA2 and SHA3 but unlike MD5 and SHA1, BLAKE offers solid security. With an optimized assembly implementation, BLAKE can be faster than all of those other hash functions.

Of course, this implementation is in Javascript, so it won't be winning any speed records. More under Performance below. It's short and sweet, less than 500 LOC.

As far as I know, this is the only package available today to compute BLAKE in a browser.

Quick Start

var blake = require('blakejs')
console.log(blake.blake2bHex('abc'))
// prints ba80a53f981c4d0d6a2797b69f12f6e94c212f14685ac4b74b12bb6fdbffa2d17d87c5392aab792dc252d5de4533cc9518d38aa8dbf1925ab92386edd4009923
console.log(blake.blake2sHex('abc'))
// prints 508c5e8c327c14e2e1a72ba34eeb452f37458b209ed63a294d999b4c86675982

API

1. Use blake2b to compute a BLAKE2b hash

Pass it a string, Buffer, or Uint8Array containing bytes to hash, and it will return a Uint8Array containing the hash.

// Computes the BLAKE2B hash of a string or byte array, and returns a Uint8Array
//
// Returns a n-byte Uint8Array
//
// Parameters:
// - input - the input bytes, as a string, Buffer, or Uint8Array
//           Strings are converted to UTF8 bytes
// - key - optional key Uint8Array, up to 64 bytes
// - outlen - optional output length in bytes, default 64
function blake2b(input, key, outlen) {
    [...]
}

For convenience, blake2bHex takes the same arguments and works the same way, but returns a hex string.

2. Use blake2b[Init,Update,Final] to compute a streaming hash

var KEY = null // optional key
var OUTPUT_LENGTH = 64 // bytes
var context = blake2bInit(OUTPUT_LENGTH, KEY)
...
// each time you get a byte array from the stream:
blake2bUpdate(context, bytes)
...
// finally, once the stream has been exhausted
var hash = blake2bFinal(context)
// returns a 64-byte hash, as a Uint8Array

3. All blake2b* functions have blake2s* equivalents

BLAKE2b: blake2b, blake2bHex, blake2bInit, blake2bUpdate, and blake2bFinal

BLAKE2s: blake2s, blake2sHex, blake2sInit, blake2sUpdate, and blake2sFinal

The inputs are identical except that maximum key size and maximum output size are 32 bytes instead of 64.

Limitations

• Can only handle up to 2**53 bytes of input

  If your webapp is hashing more than 8 petabytes, you may have other problems :)

Testing

• Examples from the RFC
• BLAKE2s self-test from the RFC
• Examples from http://pythonhosted.org/pyblake2/examples.html
• A longer set of test vectors generated by https://github.com/jedisct1/crypto-test-vectors/tree/master/crypto/hash/blake2/blake2b/nosalt-nopersonalization/generators/libsodium

Performance

BLAKE2b: 15.2 MB / second on a 2.2GHz i7-4770HQ
BLAKE2s: 20.4 MB / second

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you're using BLAKE2b in server side node.js code, you probably want the native wrapper which should be able to do several hundred MB / second on the same processor.

If you're using BLAKE2b in a web app, 15 MB/sec might be fine.

Javascript doesn't have 64-bit integers, and BLAKE2b is a 64-bit integer algorithm. Writing it withUint32Array is not that fast. BLAKE2s is a 32-bit algorithm, so it's a bit faster.

If we want better machine code at the expense of gross-looking Javascript, we could use asm.js

License

Creative Commons CC0. Ported from the reference C implementation in RFC 7693.