ECDSA Verify: A PostgreSQL Extension for ECDSA Signature Verification

Overview

ecdsa_verify is a PostgreSQL extension for verifying ECDSA signatures, implemented in Rust. It leverages the pgrx framework for creating PostgreSQL extensions in Rust, providing enhanced safety and performance compared to traditional C implementations.

This extension aims to be a compatible drop-in replacement for the C-based pg-ecdsa, with the same function signature for ease of integration.

Features

• Compatibility: Supports multiple PostgreSQL versions (11 to 16).
• Elliptic Curves: Supports secp256r1 and secp256k1 curves.
• Hash Functions: Supports SHA-256 for hashing input data.
• Performance: Written in Rust for better safety and performance.
• Testing: Comprehensive test suite to ensure reliability.
• Benchmarking: Includes benchmarks to measure performance.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Rust
• PostgreSQL
• pgrx

Skip these steps if you've already installed these, or if you're on a different platform than Ubuntu/Debian in which case you should visit the links and follow the instructions for your platform.

1. Install Rust:

   https://rustup.rs/

   curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
   source $HOME/.cargo/env
   

2. Install latest PostgreSQL:

   https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/ubuntu/

   sudo apt install -y postgresql-common
   sudo /usr/share/postgresql-common/pgdg/apt.postgresql.org.sh
   sudo apt -y install postgresql
   sudo -u postgres createuser --superuser "$USER"
   createdb "$USER"
   

3. Install pgrx:

   https://github.com/pgcentralfoundation/pgrx/

   sudo apt install -y libclang-dev build-essential libreadline-dev \
       zlib1g-dev flex bison libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libssl-dev libxml2-utils \
       xsltproc ccache pkg-config
   cargo install --locked cargo-pgrx
   cargo pgrx init
   

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/joelonsql/ecdsa_verify.git
   cd ecdsa_verify
   

2. Build and test the extension:

   cargo pgrx test
   

3. Install the extension to PostgreSQL:

   cargo pgrx install --sudo
   

Usage

SQL Function

The extension provides a single SQL function ecdsa_verify to verify ECDSA signatures.

Function Signature

\df ecdsa_verify
List of functions
-[ RECORD 1 ]-------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Schema              | public
Name                | ecdsa_verify
Result data type    | boolean
Argument data types | public_key bytea, input_data bytea, signature bytea, hash_func text, curve_name text
Type                | func

Example Usage

psql

CREATE EXTENSION ecdsa_verify;

SELECT ecdsa_verify(
    public_key := '\x7fa92dd0666eee7c13ddb7b6249b0c8f9fba4360857c4e15d2fc634a2b5a1f8fdb9983b319469d35e719a3b93e1ac292854cd3ff2ad50898681b0a32ffbcbc6a'::bytea,
    input_data := '\x49960de5880e8c687434170f6476605b8fe4aeb9a28632c7995cf3ba831d9763010000000117bd119a942a38b92bfc3b90a21f7eaa37fe1a7fa0abe27fd15dd20683b14d54'::bytea,
    signature := '\x10fab01307f3eed59bc11601265efaab524b50d017bd9cdfeec4f61b01caa8d669c6e9f8d9bcbdba4e5478cb75b084332d51b0be2c21701b157c7c87abb98057'::bytea,
    hash_func := 'sha256',
    curve_name := 'secp256r1'
);

 ecdsa_verify
--------------
 t
(1 row)

Supported Curves

• secp256r1
• secp256k1

Supported Hash Functions

• sha256

Development

Project Structure

.
├── Cargo.toml
├── LICENSE
├── benches
│   └── ecdsa_verify.rs
├── ecdsa_verify.control
├── sql
└── src
    └── lib.rs

• Cargo.toml: Project metadata and dependencies.
• src/lib.rs: Main implementation file.
• benches/ecdsa_verify.rs: Benchmarking script.
• ecdsa_verify.control: PostgreSQL extension control file.

Running Tests

To run the tests, use the following command:

cargo pgrx test

Benchmarking

To benchmark the extension, ensure you are using the Rust Nightly toolchain, then use the following command:

cargo bench

Benchmark Results

The benchmarks were run on an Intel Core i9-14900K. The results are as follows:

$ cargo bench

     Running benches/ecdsa_verify.rs (target/release/deps/ecdsa_verify-f2c7ac91fb3e2e9c)

test bench_ecdsa_verify ... bench:     839,281 ns/iter (+/- 12,977)

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgements

• Inspired by the starkbank-ecdsa library.
• Built using the pgrx framework.

Contributing

Bugfixes, optimizations and simplifications are welcome, but no more features. Please open an issue or submit a pull request.