RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) Asymmetric Encryption Algorithm Implementation — Educational Purposes

This RSA implementation now includes enhanced security features:

• OAEP with SHA-256: Encryption uses robust OAEP padding for strong semantic security.
• Constant-Time Decoding: OAEP decoding avoids timing leaks, protecting against side-channel attacks.
• RSA Blinding: Decryption uses blinding to prevent timing and power analysis attacks.

In terms of improvements, the C code file is a better choice.

These updates make RSA encryption and decryption in this project significantly more secure against modern cryptographic and side-channel threats.

• Overview
• What is RSA? (History and Detailed Explanation)
• Directory Structure
• Features
• Dependencies
• Build Instructions
• Usage Examples
• Command-Line Interface: rsa_cli
• File/Code Structure
• OS Compatibility & Warnings
• Security Notes
• License

This project provides a modern, header-only C++ implementation of the RSA cryptosystem. It is designed for learning and experimentation, featuring:

• Key generation (configurable size)
• PEM/DER encoding for key storage/interop
• Supports both PKCS#1 and PKCS#8/X.509 PEM key types for RSA keys
• Message and file encryption/decryption with selectable output formats
• A CLI tool for practical usage
• Statically linked binaries available for easy distribution and system compatibility

Note: This implementation is for educational purposes only and should NOT be used in production settings.

RSA stands for Rivest–Shamir–Adleman, named after its inventors Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. The algorithm was first publicly described in 1977 by these three MIT researchers. It provided the first practical implementation of public-key cryptography, a concept invented by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman in 1976.

The publication of RSA revolutionized the field of cryptography by introducing the concept of practical public-key cryptography, which underpins much of modern digital security, including secure web browsing, digital signatures, and secure email.

Prior to RSA and public-key cryptography, all secure communication required that both parties share a secret key in advance—a major problem for large-scale or spontaneous secure communications. RSA allows two parties to establish secure communications over an insecure channel without needing to share a secret in advance.

RSA is based on the mathematical difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers. The security of RSA relies on the fact that, while it is easy to multiply two large primes together, it is computationally infeasible to factor their product back into the original primes for suitably large numbers.

1. Select Two Large Prime Numbers (p and q):

   • These should be chosen randomly and kept secret. Typical key sizes use primes hundreds of digits long (1024, 2048, or 4096 bits).
   • The security of RSA increases with the size of these primes.

2. Compute the Modulus (n):

   • n = p * q
   • The modulus n is used as part of both the public and private keys.

3. Calculate Euler's Totient Function (φ(n)):

   • φ(n) = (p - 1) * (q - 1)
   • Euler's Totient Function counts the positive integers up to n that are relatively prime to n.

4. Choose Public Exponent (e):

   • e must be an integer such that 1 < e < φ(n) and gcd(e, φ(n)) = 1 (i.e., e and φ(n) are coprime).
   • Common choices for e are 65537, 17, or 3 because they make encryption efficient while maintaining security.

5. Compute Private Exponent (d):

   • d is the modular multiplicative inverse of e modulo φ(n), i.e., d ≡ e⁻¹ mod φ(n).
   • This means (d * e) mod φ(n) = 1.
   • d must be kept secret.

6. Public and Private Keys:

   • Public Key: The pair (n, e)
   • Private Key: The pair (n, d) (with knowledge of p and q also considered part of the private key in practical implementations for optimization)

• Encryption: Given a plaintext message m (represented as an integer 0 ≤ m < n), compute ciphertext c:
  • c = m^e mod n
• Decryption: Given ciphertext c, compute plaintext m:
  • m = c^d mod n

Note: In practice, messages larger than n must be split, padded, or handled with hybrid cryptography. Direct use of RSA is not secure for encrypting large data or arbitrary messages (see "Security Notes" below).

The security of RSA depends on the practical difficulty of factoring the large number n back into its prime components p and q. If an attacker could factor n, they could compute φ(n) and thus recover the private key d. For large enough n, this is believed to be infeasible with current technology.

Besides encryption, RSA can be used for digital signatures:

• The sender "signs" a message by computing s = m^d mod n with their private key.
• The recipient verifies the signature by computing m = s^e mod n with the sender's public key.

This allows verification of both authenticity (only the private key holder could have signed) and integrity of the original message.

• Padding Oracle/Chosen Ciphertext Attacks: Raw RSA is vulnerable to several attacks if used without proper padding schemes (e.g., PKCS#1 v1.5, OAEP).
• Key Size: Increasing computational power makes longer keys necessary. 1024-bit keys are no longer considered secure.
• Side-channel Attacks: Timing or power analysis can leak information if not properly mitigated.
• Quantum Computers: Shor's algorithm could break RSA if a sufficiently large quantum computer is ever built.

• Original RSA Paper (1978)
• Wikipedia: RSA (cryptosystem)
• Practical Cryptography for Developers

• src/ — Main C++ source code and headers
• bin/ — Command-line interface (CLI) implementation and statically linked CLI binary (srsa_cli)
• examples/ — Example programs (if present)
• README.md — Project documentation
• LICENSE — License file

• Key generation: Choose from 1024, 2048, 3072, or 4096 bits
• PEM/DER key serialization: Compatible with OpenSSL
• Supports both PKCS#1 and PKCS#8/X.509 key formats for PEM files
• Multiple output formats: Binary, hex, and base64
• File and message encryption/decryption
• Robust error handling and user feedback (colored output in CLI)
• Cross-platform (see OS notes below)

• C++17 or later
• GMP (GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library) and gmpxx (C++ bindings)
  • Install with:
    • Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev libgmpxx-dev
    • macOS (Homebrew): brew install gmp
• Standard C++17 library

g++ -std=c++17 -lgmp -lgmpxx -o rsa_cli bin/rsa_cli.cpp

g++ -std=c++17 -lgmp -lgmpxx -o rsa_example src/main.cpp

To create fully statically linked versions (for easier deployment on systems without GMP or C++ runtime shared libraries):

# Statically linked CLI (output: bin/srsa_cli)
g++ -o bin/srsa_cli bin/rsa_cli.cpp /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgmp.a -lgmpxx -static-libgcc -static-libstdc++

Both binaries will be completely self-contained and should run on any compatible Linux system without requiring GMP or C++ runtime to be installed.

#include "rsa.hpp"

int main() {
    // Generate a 2048-bit key pair
    RSA::KeyPair keys = RSA::GenerateKeyPair(RSA::KeySize::Bits2048);

    // Save as PEM (PKCS#1 for private, PKCS#1 for public)
    keys.public_key.save_pem("public.pem");
    keys.private_key.save_pem("private.pem");

    // Save private key as PKCS#8 (X.509 format)
    keys.private_key.save_pkcs8_pem("private_pkcs8.pem");

    // Save public key as X.509 SubjectPublicKeyInfo
    keys.public_key.save_x509_pem("public_x509.pem");
}

#include "rsa.hpp"

int main() {
    // Load public key (PKCS#1 PEM)
    auto pub1 = RSA::RSAPublicKey::load_pem("public.pem");
    // Load public key (X.509 PEM)
    auto pub2 = RSA::RSAPublicKey::load_x509_pem("public_x509.pem");

    // Load private key (PKCS#1 PEM)
    auto priv1 = RSA::RSAPrivateKey::load_pem("private.pem");
    // Load private key (PKCS#8 PEM)
    auto priv2 = RSA::RSAPrivateKey::load_pkcs8_pem("private_pkcs8.pem");
}

#include "rsa.hpp"
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::string message = "Hello, RSA!";

    // In-memory keys
    RSA::KeyPair keys = RSA::GenerateKeyPair(RSA::KeySize::Bits1024);

    // Encrypt with public, decrypt with private (in-memory)
    std::string encrypted = RSA::MESSAGE::Encrypt(message, keys.public_key)
                                .toFormat(RSA::OutputFormat::Base64)
                                .toString();
    std::string decrypted = RSA::MESSAGE::Decrypt(encrypted, keys.private_key, RSA::OutputFormat::Base64);

    std::cout << "Decrypted: " << decrypted << std::endl;

    // Using loaded keys (X.509 public, PKCS#8 private)
    auto pub = RSA::RSAPublicKey::load_x509_pem("public_x509.pem");
    auto priv = RSA::RSAPrivateKey::load_pkcs8_pem("private_pkcs8.pem");

    std::string encrypted2 = RSA::MESSAGE::Encrypt(message, pub)
                                 .toFormat(RSA::OutputFormat::Base64)
                                 .toString();
    std::string decrypted2 = RSA::MESSAGE::Decrypt(encrypted2, priv, RSA::OutputFormat::Base64);

    std::cout << "Decrypted (X.509/PKCS#8): " << decrypted2 << std::endl;
}

#include "rsa.hpp"

int main() {
    // Load keys
    auto pub = RSA::RSAPublicKey::load_x509_pem("public_x509.pem");
    auto priv = RSA::RSAPrivateKey::load_pkcs8_pem("private_pkcs8.pem");

    // Encrypt file
    RSA::FILE::Encrypt("plain.txt", "enc.bin", pub, RSA::OutputFormat::Binary);

    // Decrypt file
    RSA::FILE::Decrypt("enc.bin", "dec.txt", priv, RSA::OutputFormat::Binary);
}

#include "rsa.hpp"
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::string message = "Format test!";
    RSA::KeyPair keys = RSA::GenerateKeyPair(RSA::KeySize::Bits1024);

    // Encrypt to hex
    std::string hex_cipher = RSA::MESSAGE::Encrypt(message, keys.public_key)
                                .toFormat(RSA::OutputFormat::Hex)
                                .toString();
    std::string hex_plain = RSA::MESSAGE::Decrypt(hex_cipher, keys.private_key, RSA::OutputFormat::Hex);

    // Encrypt to base64
    std::string b64_cipher = RSA::MESSAGE::Encrypt(message, keys.public_key)
                                .toFormat(RSA::OutputFormat::Base64)
                                .toString();
    std::string b64_plain = RSA::MESSAGE::Decrypt(b64_cipher, keys.private_key, RSA::OutputFormat::Base64);

    std::cout << "Hex decrypted: " << hex_plain << std::endl;
    std::cout << "Base64 decrypted: " << b64_plain << std::endl;
}

// Generate keys
RSA::KeyPair keys = RSA::GenerateKeyPair(RSA::KeySize::Bits2048);

// Load public key
auto pub_pem  = RSA::RSAPublicKey::load_pem("public.pem");
auto pub_x509 = RSA::RSAPublicKey::load_x509_pem("public_x509.pem");

// Load private key
auto priv_pem   = RSA::RSAPrivateKey::load_pem("private.pem");
auto priv_pkcs8 = RSA::RSAPrivateKey::load_pkcs8_pem("private_pkcs8.pem");

The project includes a robust CLI tool, rsa_cli, for generating keys, encrypting, and decrypting messages or files.
It handles user prompts, colored output, and supports all core library functionality.

Statically linked CLI binary (srsa_cli) is available in bin/ for easy deployment.

./rsa_cli <command> [options]

Or, for the statically linked version:

./srsa_cli <command> [options]

• genkey Generate RSA key pair and save in PEM format.
• encrypt Encrypt a message or file.
• decrypt Decrypt a message or file.

• --pub <file>: Path to the public key (for encrypt/genkey)
• --priv <file>: Path to the private key (for decrypt/genkey)
• --in <file>: Input file (for --msg, input is a message string)
• --out <file>: Output file
• --bits <size>: Key size (1024, 2048, 3072, 4096; default: 1024)
• --pem-type <pkcs1|x509>: PEM key encoding type; choose between pkcs1 (traditional RSA) or x509 (PKCS#8/X.509). Default: pkcs1.
• --msg: Treat input as a string message instead of a file
• --quick: Suppress confirmation prompts
• --force: Overwrite existing output files without prompting
• --no-color: Disable colored output
• --help: Show help and exit

Generate a key pair (default PKCS#1):

./rsa_cli genkey --pub public.pem --priv private.pem --bits 2048 --quick

Generate a key pair with X.509/PKCS#8 encoding:

./rsa_cli genkey --pub public.pem --priv private.pem --bits 2048 --pem-type x509 --quick

Encrypt a file using a specific PEM type:

./rsa_cli encrypt --pub public.pem --in myfile.txt --out encrypted.bin --pem-type pkcs1

Decrypt a file with X.509/PKCS#8:

./rsa_cli decrypt --priv private.pem --in encrypted.bin --out decrypted.txt --pem-type x509

All commands above also work with ./srsa_cli, the statically linked version.

• PEM_DER namespace: ASN.1 DER and PEM/base64 encode/decode routines.
• RSA namespace: Key classes, utility functions, key generation, and message/file APIs.
  • RSAPublicKey and RSAPrivateKey: Key containers with PEM/DER serialization.
  • KeyPair: Bundles public and private keys.
  • GenerateKeyPair: Securely generates new key pairs.
  • MESSAGE namespace: Message encryption/decryption.
  • FILE namespace: File encryption/decryption with output format support.

• Example program:
  • Generates keys, saves/loads keys from PEM files.
  • Demonstrates message and file encryption/decryption.

• Fully-featured CLI for real-world use.
• Interactive prompts, colorized output, robust error handling.
• Supports key generation, encryption, and decryption of files and messages.
• Multiple output/input formats (binary, hex, base64).
• srsa_cli: Statically linked, portable CLI binary.

• Tested on: Linux (Ubuntu), macOS.
  Should work on any OS with C++17 and GMP support.
• Windows:
  • GMP library must be installed and properly linked.
  • Filesystem and colored output might behave differently or require modifications.
  • Use MSYS2/MinGW or WSL for best experience.
• Filesystem/Paths:
  Use forward slashes / for cross-platform compatibility or adjust paths as necessary.
• Statically linked binaries (srsa_cli) are recommended for Linux deployment where you want to avoid dynamic library dependencies.

• Educational use only:
  This code is NOT hardened for production and omits cryptographic best practices (e.g., no padding, no OAEP/PKCS#1).
• Direct RSA is insecure for large data:
  Encrypting large files or data directly with RSA is not secure or practical. Use hybrid cryptography (e.g., AES for data, RSA for keys) in real applications.
• No side-channel protection:
  The code does not attempt to mitigate timing or power analysis attacks.
• Key/Message Handling:
  Always protect your private keys and sensitive data.
  Do not use small key sizes (e.g., 1024 bits) for anything other than demo/learning.
• GMP dependency:
  GMP is a reliable, widely-used library, but always keep dependencies up-to-date and review their security advisories.

MIT License (see LICENSE file).

For questions, improvements, or bug reports, please open an issue or pull request!

Warning:
Do NOT use this implementation for protecting real secrets or in production systems. For professional cryptography, use vetted libraries and protocols.