1 2 OpenSSL 0.9.8a 11 Oct 2005 3 4 Copyright (c) 1998-2005 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 has been floating 40 around the net for a few years. It includes 15 41 'modes/variations' of DES (1, 2 and 3 key versions of ecb, 42 cbc, cfb and ofb; pcbc and a more general form of cfb and 43 ofb) including desx in cbc mode, a fast crypt(3), and 44 routines to read passwords from the keyboard. 45 RC4 encryption, 46 RC2 encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. 47 Blowfish encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. 48 IDEA encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. 49 50 Digests 51 MD5 and MD2 message digest algorithms, fast implementations, 52 SHA (SHA-0) and SHA-1 message digest algorithms, 53 MDC2 message digest. A DES based hash that is popular on smart cards. 54 55 Public Key 56 RSA encryption/decryption/generation. 57 There is no limit on the number of bits. 58 DSA encryption/decryption/generation. 59 There is no limit on the number of bits. 60 Diffie-Hellman key-exchange/key generation. 61 There is no limit on the number of bits. 62 63 X.509v3 certificates 64 X509 encoding/decoding into/from binary ASN1 and a PEM 65 based ASCII-binary encoding which supports encryption with a 66 private key. Program to generate RSA and DSA certificate 67 requests and to generate RSA and DSA certificates. 68 69 Systems 70 The normal digital envelope routines and base64 encoding. Higher 71 level access to ciphers and digests by name. New ciphers can be 72 loaded at run time. The BIO io system which is a simple non-blocking 73 IO abstraction. Current methods supported are file descriptors, 74 sockets, socket accept, socket connect, memory buffer, buffering, SSL 75 client/server, file pointer, encryption, digest, non-blocking testing 76 and null. 77 78 Data structures 79 A dynamically growing hashing system 80 A simple stack. 81 A Configuration loader that uses a format similar to MS .ini files. 82 83 openssl: 84 A command line tool that can be used for: 85 Creation of RSA, DH and DSA key parameters 86 Creation of X.509 certificates, CSRs and CRLs 87 Calculation of Message Digests 88 Encryption and Decryption with Ciphers 89 SSL/TLS Client and Server Tests 90 Handling of S/MIME signed or encrypted mail 91 92 93 PATENTS 94 ------- 95 96 Various companies hold various patents for various algorithms in various 97 locations around the world. _YOU_ are responsible for ensuring that your use 98 of any algorithms is legal by checking if there are any patents in your 99 country. The file contains some of the patents that we know about or are 100 rumored to exist. This is not a definitive list. 101 102 RSA Security holds software patents on the RC5 algorithm. If you 103 intend to use this cipher, you must contact RSA Security for 104 licensing conditions. Their web page is http://www.rsasecurity.com/. 105 106 RC4 is a trademark of RSA Security, so use of this label should perhaps 107 only be used with RSA Security's permission. 108 109 The IDEA algorithm is patented by Ascom in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, 110 Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the USA. They 111 should be contacted if that algorithm is to be used; their web page is 112 http://www.ascom.ch/. 113 114 The MDC2 algorithm is patented by IBM. 115 116 INSTALLATION 117 ------------ 118 119 To install this package under a Unix derivative, read the INSTALL file. For 120 a Win32 platform, read the INSTALL.W32 file. For OpenVMS systems, read 121 INSTALL.VMS. 122 123 Read the documentation in the doc/ directory. It is quite rough, but it 124 lists the functions; you will probably have to look at the code to work out 125 how to use them. Look at the example programs. 126 127 PROBLEMS 128 -------- 129 130 For some platforms, there are some known problems that may affect the user 131 or application author. We try to collect those in doc/PROBLEMS, with current 132 thoughts on how they should be solved in a future of OpenSSL. 133 134 SUPPORT 135 ------- 136 137 If you have any problems with OpenSSL then please take the following steps 138 first: 139 140 - Download the current snapshot from ftp://ftp.openssl.org/snapshot/ 141 to see if the problem has already been addressed 142 - Remove ASM versions of libraries 143 - Remove compiler optimisation flags 144 145 If you wish to report a bug then please include the following information in 146 any bug report: 147 148 - On Unix systems: 149 Self-test report generated by 'make report' 150 - On other systems: 151 OpenSSL version: output of 'openssl version -a' 152 OS Name, Version, Hardware platform 153 Compiler Details (name, version) 154 - Application Details (name, version) 155 - Problem Description (steps that will reproduce the problem, if known) 156 - Stack Traceback (if the application dumps core) 157 158 Report the bug to the OpenSSL project via the Request Tracker 159 (http://www.openssl.org/support/rt2.html) by mail to: 160 161 openssl-bugs@openssl.org 162 163 Note that mail to openssl-bugs@openssl.org is recorded in the publicly 164 readable request tracker database and is forwarded to a public 165 mailing list. Confidential mail may be sent to openssl-security@openssl.org 166 (PGP key available from the key servers). 167 168 HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO OpenSSL 169 ---------------------------- 170 171 Development is coordinated on the openssl-dev mailing list (see 172 http://www.openssl.org for information on subscribing). If you 173 would like to submit a patch, send it to openssl-dev@openssl.org with 174 the string "[PATCH]" in the subject. Please be sure to include a 175 textual explanation of what your patch does. 176 177 Note: For legal reasons, contributions from the US can be accepted only 178 if a TSU notification and a copy of the patch are sent to crypt@bis.doc.gov 179 (formerly BXA) with a copy to the ENC Encryption Request Coordinator; 180 please take some time to look at 181 http://www.bis.doc.gov/Encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNofify.html [sic] 182 and 183 http://w3.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/740.pdf (EAR Section 740.13(e)) 184 for the details. If "your encryption source code is too large to serve as 185 an email attachment", they are glad to receive it by fax instead; hope you 186 have a cheap long-distance plan. 187 188 Our preferred format for changes is "diff -u" output. You might 189 generate it like this: 190 191 # cd openssl-work 192 # [your changes] 193 # ./Configure dist; make clean 194 # cd .. 195 # diff -ur openssl-orig openssl-work > mydiffs.patch 196 197