[PYTHON-CRYPTO] Existing python APIs

[Gregory P. Smith]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 01:03:56 +0800, Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at POST1.COM> wrote:

>
>> - Mojonation writes their own crypto.  It's slow.
>
>IIRC, Mojonation's crypto is from one of the well-known C/C++ libraries.
>The crypto shouldn't be slow; it's probably the bandwidth.
>

Mojo Nation uses Wei Dai's Crypto++ library.  Either v3.2 or v4.0 based on
flags given at compile time (v4.1 should work with no or minor tweaking; we
haven't tried).

What we've crudely wrapped from Crypto++ is the following:

* Modular arithmetic (modval module) used for RSA and other signature style
operations.
* DESX stream cipher in CBC mode (incorrectly named tripledescbc module)
* crypto++'s random number generator (randsource module)

The C++ used in Crypto++ is a *real* pain in the ass.  It makes heavy use of
templates, etc.  (read: a porting and wrapping nightmare).  We'd ultimately
prefer not to use Crypto++ and our custom interface at all if something
better (prefferably based on a C library such as OpenSSL) is available.