Cryptography Primitives Library

Intel Cryptography Primitives Library

Developer(s)	Intel
Stable release	2025.1.0 / 1.1.0 (source) / March 20, 2025 (2025-03-20)
Written in	C/C++
Operating system	Linux, Microsoft Windows
Type	Library or framework
License	Proprietary, freeware

The Intel Cryptography Primitives Library is an extensive library of ready-to-use cryptographic functions for multimedia, enterprise data, embedded, communications, and scientific and technical applications, optimized for diverse Intel architectures. Its royalty-free APIs help developers take advantage of single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instructions, and the latest advanced encryption standard instruction set extensions (AES-NI) in the Intel microarchitecture.

With its initial launch of launch in October 2024, the cryptography domain API of the Intel Performance Primitives Library has been split off and moved into this new library.

Recent focus in its development has been on FIPS 140 compliance and Post-Quantum Cryptography.

The library supports Intel and compatible processors and is available for Linux and Windows. It is available separately or as a part of Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit.

The Intel Cryptography Primitives Library is open source. Thus in addition to the aforementioned binary release, it is also available as a .

Features

The library provides a comprehensive set of routines commonly used for cryptographic operations, including:

Symmetric Cryptography Primitive Functions

• AES (ECB, CBC, CTR, OFB, CFB, XTS, GCM, CCM, SIV)
• SM4 (ECB, CBC, CTR, OFB, CFB, CCM)
• TDES ((ECB, CBC, CTR, OFB, CFB))
• RC4

One-Way Hash Primitives

• SHA: SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, HSA-384, SHA-512
• MD5
• SM3

Data Authentication Primitive Functions

• HMAC
• AES-CMAC

Public Key Cryptography Functions

• RSA, RSA-OAEP, RSA-PKCS_v15, RSA-PSS
• DLP, DLP-DSA, DLP-DH
• ECC (NIST curves), ECDSA, ECDH, EC-SM2

Multi-buffer RSA, ECDSA, ECDH, x25519, SM2, SM3, SM4, and more Finite Field Arithmetic Functions Big Number Integer Arithmetic Functions PRNG/TRNG and Prime Numbers Generation

FIPS 140 Compliance

• AES
• RSA Encrypt/Decrypt, Sign/Verify
• ECDSA Sign/Verify
• Hash
• HMAC
• LMS Verify

Post-Quantum Functions

• XMSS
• LMS

History

Source

• Version 1.0.0, October 17, 2024.
• Version 1.0.1, December 11, 2024.
• Version 1.1.0, February 26, 2025.

Binary

• Version 2025.0.0 files are dated October 31, 2024.
• Version 2025.1.0 files are dated March 20, 2025.

Counterparts

Please refer to the Comparison of cryptography libraries

See also

• Intel oneAPI Base Toolkit
• Intel oneAPI HPC Toolkit
• Intel oneAPI IoT Toolkit
• Intel oneAPI Data Analytics Library (oneDAL)
• Intel oneAPI Math Kernel Library (oneMKL)
• Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (Intel IPP)
• Intel oneAPI Threading Building Blocks (oneTBB)
• Intel Advisor
• Intel VTune Profiler
• Intel Developer Zone (Intel DZ; support and discussion)

External links

NIST Post-Quantum Cryptogrpahy Standardization

• "Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)"
• "NIST Releases First Three Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards"

Post Quantum Encryption Support

• "Post-Quantum Algorithms in Intel Cryptography Primitives Library"
• "eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme (XMSS)"
• "Leighton–Micali Hash-Based Signatures (LMS)"
• "Example Code"