💬 A personal note

I originally built cipheron in 2024 for my own personal use: I was frustrated that Telegram crypto on ARM devices (Termux, Android, Raspberry Pi) was bottlenecked by software AES even though the hardware was perfectly capable of going 5× faster. So I fixed it. 😄

If cipheron helps speed up your bots, userbots, or Telegram clients: don't forget to ⭐ star the repo, it means a lot!
And do check out cryptogram (PyPI): the excellent project that inspired this work. cipheron builds on the same idea and takes it further with full OpenSSL EVP dispatch.

🧠 Why cipheron exists

Every Telegram message, file chunk, and MTProto packet is encrypted with AES-256-IGE. Popular libraries like tgcrypto and cryptogram implement IGE using AES_encrypt(): a software path that bypasses ARM Crypto Extensions and AES-NI entirely.

cipheron fixes this by routing all AES operations through OpenSSL's EVP_CipherUpdate(), which dispatches to hardware automatically:

EVP_CipherUpdate()  →  OpenSSL engine dispatch  →  aes_v8_encrypt (ARM-CE)  →  843 MB/s ✅
AES_encrypt()       →  software T-table path    →  ~130 MB/s  ← tgcrypto / cryptogram stuck here ❌

On a device with ARM Crypto Extensions confirmed at 843 MB/s CBC, cipheron IGE lands at ~600–800 MB/s: making crypto essentially free and your network the only bottleneck.

📦 Installation

pip install cipheron

Termux / Android (ARM):

pkg install clang openssl python
pip install cipheron

Verify hardware acceleration:

python -c "import cipheron; print(cipheron.get_backend(), '|', cipheron.has_aesni())"
# C/EVP+ARM-CE | True

🔌 Drop-in replacement: Pyrogram & Telethon

Method 1: sys.modules hijack ✅ recommended

Add two lines before any Pyrogram/Telethon import: zero other code changes needed:

import sys
import cipheron

# Pyrogram uses tgcrypto internally
sys.modules['tgcrypto'] = cipheron

# Telethon uses cryptg internally
sys.modules['cryptg'] = cipheron

# Now import normally — cipheron handles all crypto transparently ⚡
from pyrogram import Client
# or
from telethon import TelegramClient

Method 2: Direct API (same as tgcrypto)

import cipheron

# IGE-256 — used for every MTProto message & file chunk
encrypted = cipheron.ige256_encrypt(data, key, iv)
decrypted = cipheron.ige256_decrypt(encrypted, key, iv)

# CTR-256 — obfuscated transport layer
out, state = cipheron.ctr256_encrypt(data, key, iv, state)
out, state = cipheron.ctr256_decrypt(data, key, iv, state)

# CBC-256
encrypted = cipheron.cbc256_encrypt(data, key, iv)
decrypted = cipheron.cbc256_decrypt(encrypted, key, iv)

# PQ factorization — Telegram handshake (unique to cipheron!)
p, q = cipheron.factorize_pq_pair(pq_int)

# Runtime detection
print(cipheron.has_aesni())    # True on ARM-CE / AES-NI hardware
print(cipheron.get_backend())  # "C/EVP+ARM-CE"

Method 3: Replace all frameworks at once

import sys, cipheron

for name in ('tgcrypto', 'cryptg', 'cryptogram'):
    sys.modules[name] = cipheron

# Works transparently with any Telegram framework ✅

🚀 Benchmark Results

ARM Device (Termux / Android): ARM Crypto Extensions active

openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc → 843 MB/s  ← hardware AES confirmed ✅
843 MB/s = ARM Crypto Extensions are 100% active!

── IGE ENCRYPT (MB/s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────
  Size        tgcrypto    cryptogram    cipheron      speedup
  16 KB         ~130          ~100       ~750 ▲       5.8× 🏆
  256 KB        ~125           ~85       ~680 ▲       5.4× 🏆
  1 MB          ~128           ~90       ~700 ▲       5.5× 🏆
  8 MB          ~130           ~88       ~720 ▲       5.5× 🏆

── CTR ENCRYPT (MB/s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────
  16 KB         ~150          ~800       ~840 ▲       5.6× 🏆
  256 KB        ~148          ~810       ~830 ▲       5.6× 🏆

── CBC ENCRYPT (MB/s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────
  16 KB         ~155          ~820       ~843 ▲       5.4× 🏆

Correctness: IGE ✓ PASS   CTR ✓ PASS   CBC ✓ PASS

Why 843 MB/s matters: cipheron routes IGE through the same hardware path as CBC. That's the entire trick: and it makes all the difference.

x86 Desktop (AES-NI): Verified benchmark

── IGE ENCRYPT (MB/s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────
  Size        tgcrypto    cryptogram    cipheron      speedup
  16 KB          172         102          792 ▲       4.60× 🏆
  256 KB         133          87          353 ▲       2.65× 🏆
  1 MB           140          90          418 ▲       2.99× 🏆
  8 MB           144          90          422 ▲       2.93× 🏆

── CTR ENCRYPT (MB/s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────
  16 KB          153         964 ▲        957 ▲       6.27× 🏆
  256 KB         152         967 ▲        963 ▲       6.33× 🏆

── CBC ENCRYPT (MB/s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────
  16 KB          180         970 ▲        972 ▲       5.39× 🏆

Correctness: IGE ✓ PASS   CTR ✓ PASS

Run your own benchmark

import os, time, cipheron, tgcrypto

KEY = os.urandom(32)
IV  = os.urandom(32)
D   = os.urandom(1024 * 1024)
N   = 100

t = time.perf_counter()
for _ in range(N): cipheron.ige256_encrypt(D, KEY, IV)
print(f'cipheron : {N / (time.perf_counter() - t) * 1024:.0f} MB/s')

t = time.perf_counter()
for _ in range(N): tgcrypto.ige256_encrypt(D, KEY, IV)
print(f'tgcrypto : {N / (time.perf_counter() - t) * 1024:.0f} MB/s')

📊 Real-world impact

Each Telegram file transfer splits into 512 KB IGE-encrypted chunks. At ~800 MB/s vs ~130 MB/s, crypto overhead per chunk drops from ~4ms to ~0.6ms: your CPU is essentially free and the network is your only limit.

📚 API Reference

📄 License

MIT © 2024-Present Ankit Chaubey

👨‍💻 Developed by

Ankit Chaubey
📧 ankitchaubey.dev@gmail.com
🌐 github.com/ankit-chaubey/cipheron