In this lesson,
we will learn about Performance Considerations.
Performance considerations balance the need
for strong security
with the efficiency and speed of cryptographic processes.
Hardware acceleration is a
primary performance consideration.
Hardware acceleration uses specialized hardware components,
such as cryptographic processors,
or dedicated chips
to perform encryption and decryption operations
faster and more efficiently than would be possible
with software alone.
Let's learn more about hardware acceleration,
then we'll conduct a quick demonstration.
Hardware acceleration plays a critical role
in balancing strong security
with the need for efficient
and speedy cryptographic processes.
Hardware acceleration uses specialized hardware components
like cryptographic processors,
dedicated chips, and specialized hardware modules
to perform encryption and decryption tasks
much faster than standard software-based methods.
Hardware acceleration component examples
include hardware security modules,
which manage cryptographic keys
and perform encryption directly within the hardware,
and trusted platform modules,
which provide secure encryption, authentication,
and key storage on computers.
Graphic processing units, or GPUs,
are also used for cryptographic tasks
due to their parallel processing capabilities.
Finally, network cards with built-in encryption,
like Intel QuickAssist Technology,
accelerate cryptographic functions at the network level.
Each of these components are designed specifically
to handle certain cryptographic algorithms,
allowing them to carry out these operations more efficiently
and reduce the load on general purpose CPUs.
By offloading the cryptographic workload
to these specialized chips,
hardware acceleration significantly boosts
overall system performance.
So to get a better feel
for how helpful hardware acceleration can be,
imagine you are at a busy grocery store
with a single cashier handling all the customers.
The line moves slowly
because the cashier has to scan each item,
process payments, and bag groceries all on their own.
Now, picture the store bringing in
several other staff members to help the line move faster.
One person scans the items, another handles payments,
and a third bags the groceries.
Suddenly, the checkout process
becomes much faster and more efficient.
This is like hardware acceleration in cryptography.
Instead of relying on one general purpose component,
like the cashier, to do everything,
specialized hardware acts like the additional staff
and takes on specific tasks.
These components are optimized for speed and efficiency,
allowing the system to handle encryption and decryption
much faster, without overwhelming a single resource.
Just as dividing tasks among specialized workers
speeds up the checkout line,
hardware acceleration boost the speed
of cryptographic operations,
making sensitives more efficient and responsive.
This approach is especially valuable
in environments where both speed and security are essential,
such as high frequency trading platforms.
In such scenarios, every millisecond counts,
and hardware acceleration ensures
that complex encryption tasks are executed rapidly
without compromising the security of the transactions.
By enhancing the speed of encryption,
hardware acceleration helps maintain the high performance
needed in these critical applications,
allowing secure data processing
without slowing down the system.
In addition to trading platforms,
hardware acceleration is also used in other applications,
like virtual private networks and SSL/TLS protocols,
to enhance performance and security.
Secure sockets layer, or SSL,
and TLS, or transport layer security,
are protocols that establish secure communication channels
between devices over the internet,
such as when you visit a website
or access a secure online service.
These protocols rely heavily on encryption
to protect the data being transmitted,
ensuring that it remains private and tamper-proof.
The encryption and decryption tasks involved in SSL and TLS
are computationally intensive,
especially when handling large volumes of data
or many simultaneous connections.
Hardware acceleration helps offload
these cryptographic operations
to specialized hardware components,
such as cryptographic processors and dedicated chips,
which can perform these tasks
much faster than general purpose CPUs.
This reduces the time required
to establish secure connections
and process encrypted data,
making the overall system more efficient
by using hardware acceleration.
SSL and TLS can maintain high levels of security
without slowing down network performance,
ensuring that the encryption process
does not become a bottleneck.
This is particularly important
in environments with high traffic,
such as web servers, data centers,
and online financial services,
where fast and secure communication is essential.
Let's do a quick demo to show the impact
of hardware acceleration on cryptographic performance.
I am on a Kali Linux machine with OpenSSL installed.
OpenSSL includes a built-in speed test
to measure the performance of cryptographic algorithms.
This demonstration will show us the impact
of removing hardware acceleration.
We will start by running the OpenSSL speed test
with hardware acceleration enabled by default.
We'll do this with the following OpenSSL command.
It'll take approximately 18 to 20 seconds
for this command to execute.
It is measuring the performance of AES
with a 256-bit key in Cipher Block Chaining, or CBC, mode.
The output is showing us the number of operations per second
that are completed with different block sizes.
You can see that we have 16-byte blocks,
64-byte blocks, et cetera,
and each one of the numbers that is provided here
as the result
are in thousands of bytes per second processed.
Let's just take a look at the overall length
of each one of these results.
In the 16-byte block,
we can see that the output we receive is seven digits long.
That's true for each one of these blocks,
meaning that we're processing,
let's say in the 16384 byte block size,
1,410,088 thousands of bytes per second
that have been processed.
Okay, now let's remove hardware acceleration
with the following export OPENSSL command.
Now that hardware acceleration is removed,
we're going to rerun that speed test
that we ran the very first time.
Again, what we're going to find is it takes
approximately 18 to 20 seconds for this command to execute.
At the end, what we expect to see
with hardware acceleration removed
is that the output numbers that we receive at the bottom
are much lower than the original test that we ran,
and we can do that by just looking at the length
of each one of these outputs.
Instead of the outputs being in the millions,
we're now at 271,180
for the 16-byte block,
all the way to 283,262
in the 16384 byte block.
So as you can see, the number of bytes per second
that have been processed
is no longer in the millions
for each one of these block sizes.
It's now in the hundreds of thousands
for each one of these block sizes,
showing a significant decrease
in the number of bytes per second that are processed
when hardware acceleration is removed.
So remember, performance considerations
balance the need for strong security
with the speed and efficiency of cryptographic processes.
Hardware acceleration plays a key role
in enhancing these processes
by using specialized components,
such as cryptographic processors and dedicated chips,
to perform the encryption and decryption
much faster than software could alone.
These hardware components,
like hardware security modules and trusted platform modules,
are specifically designed
to handle certain cryptographic algorithms,
reducing the load on general purpose CPUs
and boosting overall system performance.
This approach is particularly valuable
in environments where both speed and security are critical,
as it ensures that encryption tasks are executed rapidly
without compromising security.
By offloading cryptographic workloads
to specialized hardware,
hardware acceleration enables
secure and efficient data processing
in high-demand applications,
like virtual private networks and SSL or TLS protocols,
maintaining excellent performance,
even under heavy loads.