python-mbedtls is a thin wrapper to ARM's mbed TLS library.

According to the official mbed TLS website

mbed TLS (formerly known as PolarSSL) makes it trivially easy for developers to include cryptographic and SSL/TLS capabilities in their (embedded) products, facilitating this functionality with a minimal coding footprint.

python-mbedtls is licensed under the MIT License (see LICENSE.txt). This enables the use of python-mbedtls in both open source and closed source projects. The MIT License is compatible with both GPL and Apache 2.0 license under which mbed TLS is distributed.

The wrapper is currently developed and tested on Debian Jessie and targets Python 3.4. It probably works with earlier Python releases although this was not tested.

python-mbedtls requires the mbed TLS library that can be installed with:

git clone https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls.git mbedtls.git
cd mbedtls.git
SHARED=1 make no_test
sudo make install

Building python-mbedtls requires Cython:

python3 -m pip install cython

then,

python3 -m pip install python-mbedtls

or

git clone https://github.com/Synss/python-mbedtls.git python-mbedtls.git
cd python-mbedtls.git
python3 setup.py build_ext

The unit tests further require nose and pyCrypto:

python3 -m pip install nose pycrypto
nosetests -v tests

The mbedtls.hash module provides MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2, and RIPEMD-160 secure hashes and message digests. The API follows the recommendations from PEP 452 so that it can be used as a drop-in replacement to e.g. hashlib or PyCrypto.

Here are the examples from hashlib executed with python-mbedtls:

>>> from mbedtls import hash as hashlib
>>> m = hashlib.md5()
>>> m.update(b"Nobody inspects")
>>> m.update(b" the spammish repetition")
>>> m.digest()
b'\xbbd\x9c\x83\xdd\x1e\xa5\xc9\xd9\xde\xc9\xa1\x8d\xf0\xff\xe9'
>>> m.digest_size
16
>>> m.block_size
64

More condensed:

>>> hashlib.sha224(b"Nobody inspects the spammish repetition").hexdigest()
'a4337bc45a8fc544c03f52dc550cd6e1e87021bc896588bd79e901e2'

Using new():

>>> h = hashlib.new('ripemd160')
>>> h.update(b"Nobody inspects the spammish repetition")
>>> h.hexdigest()
'cc4a5ce1b3df48aec5d22d1f16b894a0b894eccc'

The mbedtls.hmac module computes HMAC. The API follows the recommendations from PEP 452 as well.

Example:

>>> from mbedtls import hmac
>>> m = hmac.new(b"This is my secret key", digestmod="md5")
>>> m.update(b"Nobody inspects")
>>> m.update(b" the spammish repetition")
>>> m.digest()
b'\x9d-/rj\\\x98\x80\xb1rG\x87\x0f\xe9\xe4\xeb'

The mbedtls.cipher module provides symmetric encryption. The API follows the recommendations from PEP 272 so that it can be used as a drop-in replacement to e.g. PyCrypto.

mbedtls provides the following algorithms:

• Aes encryption/decryption (128, 192, and 256 bits) in ECB, CBC, CFB128, CTR, GCM, or CCM mode;
• Arc4 encryption/decryption;
• Blowfish encryption/decryption in ECB, CBC, CFB64, or CTR mode;
• Camellia encryption/decryption (128, 192, and 256 bits) in ECB, CBC, CFB128, CTR, GCM, or CCM mode;
• DES encryption/decryption in ECB, or CBC mode;

Notes:

• Tagging and padding are not wrapped.
• The counter in CTR mode cannot be explicitly provided.

Example:

>>> from mbedtls import cipher
>>> c = cipher.AES.new(b"My 16-bytes key.", cipher.MODE_CBC, b"CBC needs an IV.")
>>> enc = c.encrypt(b"This is a super-secret message!")
>>> enc
b'*`k6\x98\x97=[\xdf\x7f\x88\x96\xf5\t\x19J7\x93\xb5\xe0~\t\x9e\x968m\xcd\x
>>> c.decrypt(enc)
b'This is a super-secret message!'

The mbedtls.pk module provides the RSA cryptosystem. This includes:

• Public-private key generation and key import/export in PEM and DER formats;
• Asymmetric encryption and decryption;
• Message signature and verification.

Key generation, the default size is 2048 bits:

>>> from mbedtls import pk
>>> rsa = pk.RSA()
>>> rsa.has_private()
False
>>> rsa.generate()
>>> rsa.key_size
256
>>> rsa.has_private() and rsa.has_public()
True

Message encryption and decryption:

>>> enc = rsa.encrypt(b"secret message")
>>> rsa.decrypt(enc)
b"secret message"

Message signature and verification:

>>> sig = rsa.sign(b"Please sign here.")
>>> rsa.verify(b"Please sign here.", sig)
True
>>> rsa.verify(b"Sorry, wrong message.", sig)
False
>>> prv, pub = rsa.export(format="DER")
>>> other = pk.RSA()
>>> other.import_(pub)
>>> other.has_private()
False
>>> other.verify(b"Please sign here.", sig)
True