Implementations of the Ascon Family

This is a collection of hardware and software implementations of Ascon. Reference implementations are included as submodules, while this file lists additional implementations in various languages.

⚠️ All repositories implement the submitted candidate design. The final NIST standard is not yet published and may be incompatible with these implementations due to minor changes.

⚠️ Note that linked implementations may become outdated or incorrect and should not be used for productive environments without caution.

About Ascon

Ascon is a family of authenticated encryption (AEAD) and hashing algorithms designed to be lightweight and easy to implement, even with added countermeasures against side-channel attacks. It was designed by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, and Intel Labs: Christoph Dobraunig, Maria Eichlseder, Florian Mendel, and Martin Schläffer.

Ascon has been selected as the standard for lightweight cryptography in the NIST Lightweight Cryptography competition (2019–2023) and as the primary choice for lightweight authenticated encryption in the final portfolio of the CAESAR competition (2014–2019).

The Ascon family provides multiple different schemes; not all linked implementations implement all algorithms:

• Authenticated encryption (Ascon-128, Ascon-128a, Ascon-80pq)

• Hashing algorithms including hash functions with fixed 256-bit tag size (Ascon-Hash, Ascon-Hasha) and eXtendable Output Functions (XOFs) with variable output lengths (Ascon-Xof, Ascon-Xofa)

• Authentication algorithms including Message Authentication Codes (MACs) with fixed 128-bit tag size (Ascon-Mac, Ascon-Maca) and PseudoRandom Functions (PRFs) with variable output lengths (Ascon-Prf, Ascon-Prfa), as well as a variant for short messages of up to 128 bits (Ascon-PrfShort)

Find the specification of Ascon v1.2 as submitted to NIST LWC and more information here: https://ascon.iaik.tugraz.at/

Software Implementations

C/C++

Description	Code	Author	Comments and supported variants
⭐ C reference implementation	https://github.com/ascon/ascon-c	Ascon Team	Features both the reference implementation and optimized implementations (64-bit) of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a. For a detailed overview of the performance of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a on different CPUs see eBAEAD.
C collection with benchmarks	https://lab.las3.de/gitlab/lwc/candidates/tree/master/ascon/Implementations	Rhys Weatherley et al.	Collection with implementations by multiple authors, including benchmarking results (AEAD and hash variants)
C with Init-Update-Final interface	https://github.com/TheMatjaz/LibAscon	Matjaž Guštin	C11 library wrapping the reference C implementation (all AEAD and hash variants), including Init-Update-Final processing and variable tag length
C/assembly optimized for 32-bit architectures (ESP32/Xtensa, RISC-V)	in LAS3 collection	Ferdinand Bachmann	C wrapper with assembly optimized for Tensilica Xtensa and 32-bit RISC-V (all AEAD and hash variants)
C optimized for RISC-V	https://github.com/ulmer-a/lightweight_aead	Alexander Ulmer	RISC-V implementation of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a

Other Languages

Description	Code	Author	Comments and supported variants
⭐ Python reference implementation	https://github.com/meichlseder/pyascon	Ascon Team	Reference implementation of all AEAD and hash family members. Note: The pypi package is not maintained by us.
Cython/Python	https://github.com/xHappenZ/cyascon	Oliver Popa	Python wrapper with C/Cython implementation (all AEAD and hash variants), with optional init-update-final interface.
Java	https://github.com/ascon/javaascon	Hannes Groß	Java implementation of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a.
Java for JCE	-	SIC	IAIK-LW Provider for the Java Cryptography Extension (JCE). Links: commercial toolkit, free evaluation version
Rust	https://github.com/RustCrypto/hashes/tree/master/ascon-hash, https://github.com/RustCrypto/AEADs/tree/master/ascon-aead	Sebastian Ramacher	Rust implementation, as part of the RustCrypto library, of all AEAD and hash variants. Links: git (hash), git (AEAD), crate (hash), crate (AEAD)
Jasmin	https://github.com/jerlacher/ascon-jasmin	Johannes Erlacher	Jasmin implementation with a Rust interface (Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a AEAD variants)
Go	https://ascon.iaik.tugraz.at/www.github.com/cloudflare/circl	Armando Faz	Go implementation as part of the CIRCL library (all AEAD variants)
TypeScript	https://github.com/Simolation/ascon-js	Simon Osterlehner	Fully typed TypeScript/JavaScript library (all AEAD and hash variants). Link: npm
TypeScript/JavaScript	https://github.com/brainfoolong/js-ascon	Roland Eigelsreiter	JavaScript/TypeScript implementation (all Ascon family members). Link: npm
PHP	https://github.com/brainfoolong/php-ascon	Roland Eigelsreiter	PHP 8+ implementation (all Ascon family members)
Zig	https://github.com/ziglang/zig/blob/master/lib/std/crypto/ascon.zig	Frank Denis	Zig implementation as part of the standard library (permutation only)

Hardware Implementations

🚧 to be completed

Co-Processor

🚧 to be completed

Benchmarks

🚧 to be completed