Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 14:41:24 -0400
From: Bill Cox <waywardgeek@...hershed.org>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: A review per day - Battcrypt

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Battcrypt is interesting.  It's most similar entry is PufferFish,
which is also an extension of Bcrypt to use more memory.  It was
written by Steve Thomas, who not only is quite good at finding
weakness, he's also great at writing code that clearly has none.  It
took me very little time to review his code.  I have zero negative
comments to report.  I see zero mistakes that result in weaknesses.

As an algorithm, Battcrypt inherits the Blowfish encryption from
bcrypt, but extends it to use more memory.  It has a 2KiB window it
moves around memory unpredictably, doing Blowfish encryptions.  Like
PufferFish, I expect it to have excellent GPU defense.  I was hoping
that Battcrypt, with it's 2KiB window it moves around, would run
efficiently when busting out of cache memory into DRAM, making it a
possible Scrypt replacement.  However, in it's current form, it's too
slow.  Here's my benchmarks.

4MiB benchmark:

PHC> time ./phs-battcrypt 0 9
Allocated 4194304 memory

47 b1 c0 b0 71 9c 87 f1
9c 3c 6e 2d b1 c3 95 39
a3 9c 22 38 9d a5 41 29
06 eb cb 9b 7d 62 14 06      32 (octets)


real	0m0.089s
user	0m0.089s
sys	0m0.000s


1GiB benchmark:

PHC> time ./phs-battcrypt 0 17
Allocated 1073741824 memory

17 2b e5 77 32 76 4a 97
39 a4 fe 1c f6 32 fe c4
74 80 24 39 ec fb 71 08
db 70 c1 0e a7 24 e3 76      32 (octets)


real	0m20.192s
user	0m20.122s
sys	0m0.076s


These numbers are *way* too high for competing with Scrypt in large
memory hashing.  However, for strong GPU defense in small memory,
Battcrypt is great, just like PufferFish and bcrypt.  I tried to see
if I could tweak the code to get it to be speed competitive with the 3
potential Scrypt replacements, but I failed.  I reduced the encryption
rounds from 16 to 1, and that helped a lot, and I got rid of the early
garlic rounds and only computed the last one, but it was still too
slow.  Here's my benchmarks with these two tweaks:


Reduced round version with minGarlic == maxGarlic:

PHC> time ./phs-battcrypt 0 9
Allocated 4194304 memory

56 c5 19 9a f6 08 1f 6e
39 c0 c1 05 11 4d 98 87
bd 62 10 c5 00 27 02 61
4b 8c 0e f5 a6 bd d8 2b      32 (octets)


real	0m0.014s
user	0m0.009s
sys	0m0.005s

PHC> time ./phs-battcrypt 0 17
Allocated 1073741824 memory

18 fd d1 02 33 32 49 89
bd 48 86 70 64 10 78 e2
aa ae 02 4d 32 4e ac c5
03 83 be c8 06 b7 d7 62      32 (octets)


real	0m2.232s
user	0m2.168s
sys	0m0.064s

Lyra2 does the 1GiB benchmark in something like 0.34 seconds.  > 2
seconds is a non-starter for Scrypt replacement.  I am not sure
exactly what is keeping it from running faster, but Steve can figure
it out.  As it is, I see Battcrypt and PufferFish as essentially on
equal footing as a pure Bcrypt replacement.  Only Yescrypt also
competes in this category at this level with these two, though both
PufferFish and Battcrypt have that bcrypt KISS simplicity, while
Yescrypt does not.

Assuming we may want to have a Bcrypt replacement winner, I have a
hard time recommending that either PufferFish or Battcrypt be dropped
from the second round.
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