Show HN: A Ground Up TLS 1.3 Client Written in C

Pico-TLS provides a ground-up implementation of TLS 1.3 in C, designed for minimal footprint and embedded systems. For local LLM practitioners, this is particularly relevant when deploying inference servers on resource-constrained devices like Raspberry Pi, edge TPUs, or embedded systems where a full OpenSSL or libressl dependency may be prohibitive.

Secure communication is essential for any networked LLM deployment, especially when models handle sensitive data or run in untrusted environments. A lightweight TLS implementation enables practitioners to add encryption and authentication to inference APIs without the memory and code-size overhead of conventional crypto libraries, making it feasible to run secure inference on extremely constrained hardware.

For edge deployments using frameworks like llama.cpp or Ollama on minimal hardware, Pico-TLS could be integrated into inference server implementations to ensure data in transit is protected, combining privacy-preserving on-device inference with network security.

Source: Hacker News · Relevance: 5/10