README revision 194206
1 2 OpenSSL 0.9.8k 3 4 Copyright (c) 1998-2008 The OpenSSL Project 5 Copyright (c) 1995-1998 Eric A. Young, Tim J. Hudson 6 All rights reserved. 7 8 DESCRIPTION 9 ----------- 10 11 The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, 12 commercial-grade, fully featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the 13 Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) 14 protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. 15 The project is managed by a worldwide community of volunteers that use the 16 Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenSSL toolkit and its 17 related documentation. 18 19 OpenSSL is based on the excellent SSLeay library developed from Eric A. Young 20 and Tim J. Hudson. The OpenSSL toolkit is licensed under a dual-license (the 21 OpenSSL license plus the SSLeay license) situation, which basically means 22 that you are free to get and use it for commercial and non-commercial 23 purposes as long as you fulfill the conditions of both licenses. 24 25 OVERVIEW 26 -------- 27 28 The OpenSSL toolkit includes: 29 30 libssl.a: 31 Implementation of SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1 and the required code to support 32 both SSLv2, SSLv3 and TLSv1 in the one server and client. 33 34 libcrypto.a: 35 General encryption and X.509 v1/v3 stuff needed by SSL/TLS but not 36 actually logically part of it. It includes routines for the following: 37 38 Ciphers 39 libdes - EAY's libdes DES encryption package which was floating 40 around the net for a few years, and was then relicensed by 41 him as part of SSLeay. It includes 15 'modes/variations' 42 of DES (1, 2 and 3 key versions of ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb; 43 pcbc and a more general form of cfb and ofb) including desx 44 in cbc mode, a fast crypt(3), and routines to read 45 passwords from the keyboard. 46 RC4 encryption, 47 RC2 encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. 48 Blowfish encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. 49 IDEA encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. 50 51 Digests 52 MD5 and MD2 message digest algorithms, fast implementations, 53 SHA (SHA-0) and SHA-1 message digest algorithms, 54 MDC2 message digest. A DES based hash that is popular on smart cards. 55 56 Public Key 57 RSA encryption/decryption/generation. 58 There is no limit on the number of bits. 59 DSA encryption/decryption/generation. 60 There is no limit on the number of bits. 61 Diffie-Hellman key-exchange/key generation. 62 There is no limit on the number of bits. 63 64 X.509v3 certificates 65 X509 encoding/decoding into/from binary ASN1 and a PEM 66 based ASCII-binary encoding which supports encryption with a 67 private key. Program to generate RSA and DSA certificate 68 requests and to generate RSA and DSA certificates. 69 70 Systems 71 The normal digital envelope routines and base64 encoding. Higher 72 level access to ciphers and digests by name. New ciphers can be 73 loaded at run time. The BIO io system which is a simple non-blocking 74 IO abstraction. Current methods supported are file descriptors, 75 sockets, socket accept, socket connect, memory buffer, buffering, SSL 76 client/server, file pointer, encryption, digest, non-blocking testing 77 and null. 78 79 Data structures 80 A dynamically growing hashing system 81 A simple stack. 82 A Configuration loader that uses a format similar to MS .ini files. 83 84 openssl: 85 A command line tool that can be used for: 86 Creation of RSA, DH and DSA key parameters 87 Creation of X.509 certificates, CSRs and CRLs 88 Calculation of Message Digests 89 Encryption and Decryption with Ciphers 90 SSL/TLS Client and Server Tests 91 Handling of S/MIME signed or encrypted mail 92 93 94 PATENTS 95 ------- 96 97 Various companies hold various patents for various algorithms in various 98 locations around the world. _YOU_ are responsible for ensuring that your use 99 of any algorithms is legal by checking if there are any patents in your 100 country. The file contains some of the patents that we know about or are 101 rumored to exist. This is not a definitive list. 102 103 RSA Security holds software patents on the RC5 algorithm. If you 104 intend to use this cipher, you must contact RSA Security for 105 licensing conditions. Their web page is http://www.rsasecurity.com/. 106 107 RC4 is a trademark of RSA Security, so use of this label should perhaps 108 only be used with RSA Security's permission. 109 110 The IDEA algorithm is patented by Ascom in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, 111 Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the USA. They 112 should be contacted if that algorithm is to be used; their web page is 113 http://www.ascom.ch/. 114 115 The MDC2 algorithm is patented by IBM. 116 117 NTT and Mitsubishi have patents and pending patents on the Camellia 118 algorithm, but allow use at no charge without requiring an explicit 119 licensing agreement: http://info.isl.ntt.co.jp/crypt/eng/info/chiteki.html 120 121 INSTALLATION 122 ------------ 123 124 To install this package under a Unix derivative, read the INSTALL file. For 125 a Win32 platform, read the INSTALL.W32 file. For OpenVMS systems, read 126 INSTALL.VMS. 127 128 Read the documentation in the doc/ directory. It is quite rough, but it 129 lists the functions; you will probably have to look at the code to work out 130 how to use them. Look at the example programs. 131 132 PROBLEMS 133 -------- 134 135 For some platforms, there are some known problems that may affect the user 136 or application author. We try to collect those in doc/PROBLEMS, with current 137 thoughts on how they should be solved in a future of OpenSSL. 138 139 SUPPORT 140 ------- 141 142 If you have any problems with OpenSSL then please take the following steps 143 first: 144 145 - Download the current snapshot from ftp://ftp.openssl.org/snapshot/ 146 to see if the problem has already been addressed 147 - Remove ASM versions of libraries 148 - Remove compiler optimisation flags 149 150 If you wish to report a bug then please include the following information in 151 any bug report: 152 153 - On Unix systems: 154 Self-test report generated by 'make report' 155 - On other systems: 156 OpenSSL version: output of 'openssl version -a' 157 OS Name, Version, Hardware platform 158 Compiler Details (name, version) 159 - Application Details (name, version) 160 - Problem Description (steps that will reproduce the problem, if known) 161 - Stack Traceback (if the application dumps core) 162 163 Report the bug to the OpenSSL project via the Request Tracker 164 (http://www.openssl.org/support/rt.html) by mail to: 165 166 openssl-bugs@openssl.org 167 168 Note that mail to openssl-bugs@openssl.org is recorded in the publicly 169 readable request tracker database and is forwarded to a public 170 mailing list. Confidential mail may be sent to openssl-security@openssl.org 171 (PGP key available from the key servers). 172 173 HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO OpenSSL 174 ---------------------------- 175 176 Development is coordinated on the openssl-dev mailing list (see 177 http://www.openssl.org for information on subscribing). If you 178 would like to submit a patch, send it to openssl-dev@openssl.org with 179 the string "[PATCH]" in the subject. Please be sure to include a 180 textual explanation of what your patch does. 181 182 Note: For legal reasons, contributions from the US can be accepted only 183 if a TSU notification and a copy of the patch are sent to crypt@bis.doc.gov 184 (formerly BXA) with a copy to the ENC Encryption Request Coordinator; 185 please take some time to look at 186 http://www.bis.doc.gov/Encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNofify.html [sic] 187 and 188 http://w3.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/740.pdf (EAR Section 740.13(e)) 189 for the details. If "your encryption source code is too large to serve as 190 an email attachment", they are glad to receive it by fax instead; hope you 191 have a cheap long-distance plan. 192 193 Our preferred format for changes is "diff -u" output. You might 194 generate it like this: 195 196 # cd openssl-work 197 # [your changes] 198 # ./Configure dist; make clean 199 # cd .. 200 # diff -ur openssl-orig openssl-work > mydiffs.patch 201 202