A Lightweight SSL Library or Embedded SSL Library for Developers

Computers & TechnologyTechnology

  • Author James Schmitt
  • Published May 5, 2017
  • Word count 488

Digital security has become the concern of the century. You owe it to your users to provide top-level security in all your apps and devices. wolfSSL is designed primarily for integration with real-time operating systems, resource-contained environments and embedded systems. Its lightweight nature makes it the perfect choice for any situation where storage space is limited, since it's 20 times smaller than the popular OpenSSL solution. However, despite being a lightweight solution, it offers progressive ciphers including RABBIT, HC-128 and NTRU. Making it even more suitable for standard operating environments is the fact that it is offered with excellent cross-platform compatibility and royalty-free pricing.

Extensive Platform and Language Support

wolfSSL offers a truly versatile solution for device and application developers working with a wide range of hardware and software products. It is designed with maximum portability in mind, making it extremely easy to compile on new platforms as well. Even if your desired platform does not appear to be official supported, you can contact us for further help and advice. wolfSSL supports the C programming language with regards to its primary interface which, in itself, is very widely supported and has long been an industry standard. However, the embedded library also supports various other popular host programming languages, including Java, C#, Perl, PHP and Python.

Benchmarking wolfSSL Performance

The SSL library was designed from the ground up with three main priorities in mind: portability, memory usage and performance. In other words, it's designed to offer excellent security while also providing some important features and functionality that most competing products simply don't have. Naturally, many developers want to know how this solution stacks up against others with regards to performance on specific hardware devices or in various specialized computing environments. As such, a benchmarking application is also included in the package, allowing you to determine encryption times and cycles using various cryptographic algorithms.

wolfSSL leaves a minimal footprint on system resources. The compiled binary size can be anything between 20 and 100 kilobytes, depending on the build options specified and the compiler used. In most optimized and embedded systems, the footprint size is around 60 kilobytes. Despite this small size, however, it will contain a fully featured TLS 1.2 client and server, which is the current industry-standard specification for the TLS protocol. You can find the results of various benchmarking tests on the relevant page on the official website.

Special Builds Available

There are various build options available for the wolfSSL TLS library. One of the most popular is LeanPSK, a recently implemented set of options that further reduces the size of the library to as little as 20 kilobytes. However, owing to the small size of the library, you will need to use pre-shared keys (PSK) for it to work correctly.

wolfSSL also offers various customer support packages depending on your requirements, and they're available on an annual basis. You can compare each of the options side-by-side to determine which is best for you.

James Schmitt is a software developer who regularly works with embedded systems. He often integrates a TLS library with his products to enhance security and protect his users.

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