Cryptographic Primitives & Protocols
2025-07-13 programming sketch crypto
Protocols & Primitives Used (near-exhaustive)
| Domain | Protocol | Primitives Used | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transport Security | TLS 1.3 | ECDHE + AES-GCM/ChaCha20-Poly1305 + HKDF + HMAC + RSA-PSS/ECDSA/EdDSA + SHA-2/SHA-3 | RFC 8446 |
| HTTPS | TLS + X.509 (RSA/ECDSA) | Mozilla TLS Docs | |
| DTLS 1.3 | ECDHE + AES-GCM/ChaCha20-Poly1305 + HKDF + HMAC + RSA-PSS/ECDSA/EdDSA | RFC 9147 | |
| Email Security | PGP/OpenPGP | RSA/DSA/EdDSA + AES-256/3DES + SHA-2/SHA-3 + DH | RFC 4880 |
| S/MIME | RSA/ECDSA + AES/3DES + SHA-2 + X.509 | RFC 8551 | |
| Encrypted Messaging | Signal | X3DH + Double Ratchet + AES-256 + HMAC-SHA256 + Ed25519 | Signal Spec |
| Matrix/OMEMO | Olm/Megolm + Curve25519 + AES-256 + HMAC-SHA256 + Ed25519 | Matrix Spec | |
| Wickr | ECDH + AES-256-GCM + HMAC-SHA512 + BLAKE2 + Ed25519 | Wickr Protocol | |
| Public Blockchains | Bitcoin | SHA-256 + RIPEMD-160 + ECDSA + Merkle trees | Bitcoin Whitepaper |
| Ethereum | Keccak-256 + ECDSA + Merkle Patricia Trie | Ethereum Docs | |
| Cardano | BLAKE2b-256 + EdDSA + VRF + Merkle trees | Cardano Docs | |
| Privacy Blockchains | Zcash | zk-SNARKs + Pedersen commitments + BLS12-381 + Merkle trees + Equihash | Zcash Protocol Spec |
| Filecoin | zk-SNARKs + PoRep + PoSt + VDFs + MerkleCRH | Filecoin Spec | |
| Monero | Ring signatures + Pedersen commitments + Bulletproofs + Ed25519 + Keccak | Monero Research Lab | |
| Consensus & Randomness | Algorand | VRFs + BA⋆ + SHA-256 | Algorand Whitepaper |
| Ouroboros | VRFs + BLS signatures + PoS | Cardano Ouroboros Spec | |
| Authentication Tokens | OAuth 2.0 / OIDC | JWT + HMAC-SHA256 + RSA/ECDSA + TLS | OIDC Spec |
| SAML 2.0 | XML DSig (RSA/ECDSA) + SHA-256 + AES | OASIS SAML Spec | |
| Remote Access / Tunnels | OpenSSH | ECDH/X25519 + AES-GCM/ChaCha20-Poly1305 + HMAC-SHA2 + Ed25519/RSA | OpenSSH Protocol |
| WireGuard | Noise IK (Curve25519) + ChaCha20-Poly1305 + BLAKE2s | WireGuard Protocol | |
| IPsec | IKEv2/DH/ECDH + AES-GCM + HMAC + RSA/ECDSA | RFC 7296 | |
| Anonymity Networks | Tor | Onion Routing + DH + AES-CTR + SHA-256 + Curve25519/Ed25519 + TLS | Tor Spec |
| Secure Multiparty Computation | SPDZ | Secret sharing + HE (Paillier) + Beaver triples + AES + OT | SPDZ Protocol |
| GMW | OT + Garbled circuits + AES + SHA-256 | GMW Protocol | |
| Digital Signatures | DSA | SHA-2 + DL (finite fields) | FIPS 186-4 |
| ECDSA | EC (secp) + SHA-2 | FIPS 186-4 | |
| EdDSA | Ed25519 + SHA-512 + Twisted Edwards | RFC 8032 |
Primitives (near-exhaustive)
| Category | Sub-category | Name | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Symmetric Cryptography | Block Ciphers | AES | NIST FIPS 197 |
| DES | NIST FIPS 46-3 | ||
| 3DES | NIST SP 800-67 | ||
| PRESENT | ISO/IEC 29192-2 | ||
| Stream Ciphers | ChaCha20 | RFC 8439 | |
| RC4 | Deprecated | ||
| AEAD | AES-GCM | NIST SP 800-38D | |
| ChaCha20-Poly1305 | RFC 8439 | ||
| MACs | HMAC | RFC 2104 | |
| CMAC | NIST SP 800-38B | ||
| Poly1305 | RFC 8439 | ||
| Asymmetric Cryptography | Encryption | RSA | RFC 8017 |
| ElGamal | - | ||
| Signatures | RSA-PSS | RFC 8017 | |
| DSA | FIPS 186-4 | ||
| ECDSA | FIPS 186-4 | ||
| EdDSA (Ed25519) | RFC 8032 | ||
| Key Exchange | DH | RFC 2631 | |
| ECDH | NIST SP 800-56A | ||
| X25519 | RFC 7748 | ||
| Hash Functions | - | SHA-1 | Deprecated, FIPS 180-4 |
| SHA-2 (SHA-256) | FIPS 180-4 | ||
| SHA-3 | FIPS 202 | ||
| Keccak | - | ||
| BLAKE2 | RFC 7693 | ||
| RIPEMD-160 | - | ||
| Key Derivation Functions | - | HKDF | RFC 5869 |
| PBKDF2 | RFC 8018 | ||
| Pseudorandom Functions | - | PRF (AES-based) | - |
| Generators | CSPRNG | NIST SP 800-90A | |
| Zero-Knowledge Proofs | - | zk-SNARKs (Groth16) | - |
| Bulletproofs | - | ||
| Commitments | - | Pedersen | - |
| Hash-based | - | ||
| Verifiable Computations | - | VRF | RFC 9381 |
| VDF | - | ||
| Proofs | PoRep | Filecoin Spec | |
| PoSt | Filecoin Spec | ||
| Structures | - | Merkle Trees | - |
| Merkle Patricia Trie | Ethereum Docs | ||
| Other Primitives | Signatures | Ring Signatures | - |
| MPC | Oblivious Transfer (OT) | - | |
| Garbled Circuits | - | ||
| Secret Sharing | - | ||
| Anonymity | Blind Signatures | - | |
| Group Signatures | - |
Also related:
Incoming Internal References (0)
Outgoing Internal References (0)
Outgoing Web References (1)
-
www.lesswrong.com/posts/PxMSnEPFG34o9zkq4/what-is-cryptographically-possible
- What is Cryptographically Possible — LessWrong
