Speed up the checksum computation in the verification extension
Originally created by @sajolida on #16905 (Redmine)
- Back in 2015, DAVE used to rely on a native call
(`nsICryptoHash`) which is not
available anymore to WebExtensions. It was so fast that we never felt
the need to measure how many seconds it took; probably less than 5. - The WebExtension relies on the Forge library and takes 45
seconds on a Core i5 M520, around 10 times more.
Asking upstream a new API for checksum calculation sounds hard as it
would require lobbying both Mozilla and Chrome. An alternative could
be
to rewrite the checksum calculation in
[WebAssembly](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly).
This could be a good starter task for someone who knows JavaScript and WebAssembly as the README of the verification extension has detailed instructions for how to test it locally:
https://git.tails.boum.org/verification-extension/tree/README
Related issues
- Related to #14544 (closed)
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