libkcapi allows user-space to access the Linux kernel crypto API.

libkcapi uses this Netlink interface and exports easy to use APIs so that a developer does not need to consider the low-level Netlink interface handling.

The library does not implement any cipher algorithms. All consumer requests are sent to the kernel for processing. Results from the kernel crypto API are returned to the consumer via the library API.

The kernel interface and therefore this library can be used by unprivileged processes.

The focus during the development of this library is put on speed. This library does not perform any memcpy for processing the cryptographic data! The library uses scatter / gather lists to eliminate the need for moving data around in memory.