Hello?

[Werner Koch]

"D. Hugh Redelmeier" <hugh@mimosa.com> writes:

> Will the list be the right way to communicate (once it is functional)?

Yes, I did this on request of one Debian developer but it happend to
get never used.  The permissions are now fixed.  Please subscribe if
you like to do so.

> Right now, I'm trying to hack dsa.c/elgamal.c to fit into our code
> since we need support for DSS yesterday.

I understand.

> I'm trying to make dsa.c/elgamal.c work with GMP because that is what
> we use for big integers.  We use it because we use libdes (Eric
> Young's old code) and libdes uses GMP.  What a tangle.

libdes needs big integers - it is not the one from OpenSSL I guess.

There are some reasons why I decided not to use plain GMP:

  - Too much unneeded code (okay that doesn't matter with  shared lib)
  - GMP does not use a pointer to hide internals - this gives better
    performance but because we only do a few function calls this does
    not matter much when compared to the execution time of a single
    function.
  - It is not possible to use a chunk of mlock()ed memory for
    confidential numbers due to the use of alloca() and mallocs.  I
    hacked the whole library to support what I called "secure memory":
    You have 2 calls to allocate a MPI, one for normal ones and
    another which flags that MPI to be stored and calucatled only in
    a special memory area.

> In the end, we'd like all sorts of crypto code: symmetric and public
> key.  I'd like to be using one library, not two.  We'd even like RSA,
> but that isn't important for another year :-).

No problem; there will be RSA on Sep 20th, 2000 ;-)

> Oh, and it would be great if we could compile it in a way for it to be
> run in the linux kernel (not my area).  I don't know how this fits in
> with the international kernel patch; maybe it doesn't.

I talked with Richard about this and I will take care to allow for
this (ciphers and digests).

> Any thought to a timeframe for the gcrypt portion?

Yes, last spring :-(  Due to many other tasked I have not done any
real work on code for the last couple of weeks.  I'll be to Japan next
week and I hope to find some time to work on libgcrypt while I am
there or in the week after it.

I really need libgcrypt for gnupg 1.1 and some other things I am
working on, so there should be some working code soon. 

> Should I be on a different mailing list to find out about this?

Feel free to use this ML, it is no extra work for me (I will add 
a search engine for the lists too).


   Werner

-- 
Werner Koch at guug.de           www.gnupg.org           keyid 621CC013