Python Cryptograph Toolkit 1.9alpha1

[Andrew Kuchling]

I've wrapped up a new, alpha-quality, release of the Python
Cryptography Toolkit.  It's not backward-compatible with earlier
releases, in an effort to fix the design errors I've made in the past.
Dodgy algorithms have been dropped, and one new one, AES, has been added.
The public-key code is also gone.

A list of the changes in this version:

	* Added Crypto.Cipher.AES.

	* Added the CTR mode and the variable-sized CFB mode from the
          NIST standard on feedback modes. 
	
	* Removed Diamond, HAVAL, MD5, Sapphire, SHA, and Skipjack.  MD5
	  and SHA are included with Python; the others are all of marginal
	  usefulness in the real world.

	* Renamed the module-level constants ECB, CFB, &c., to MODE_ECB,
	  MODE_CFB, as part of making the block encryption modules 
	  compliant with PEP 272.  (I'm not sure about this change;
	  if enough users complain about it, I might back it out.)
	
	* Made the hashing modules compliant with PEP 247 (not backward
   	  compatible -- the major changes are that the constructor is now 
	  MD2.new and not MD2.MD2, and the size of the digest is now 
	  given as 'digest_size', not 'digestsize'.

	* The Crypto.PublicKey package is no longer installed; the
	  interfaces are all wrong, and I have no idea what the right
	  interfaces should be.  

See the TODO file for a list of other fixes I'd like to make before
finalizing this as version 2.0.  CVS is available through the pycrypto
project on SourceForge.

The source code is available at 
http://www.amk.ca/files/python/pycrypto-1.9a1.tar.gz .


-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://www.amk.ca
run-time. n. (QA testing) the moment when the programmer shouts "Must
run!" and disappears.
    -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, _The Computer Contradictionary_