NEWS for the 2.7.1 release
This is a bugfix release.
Bug fixes:
* Fixed a bug in the new ECC code. The ecc_j_to_a function
called GMP:s mpn_mul_n (via ecc_modp_mul) with overlapping
input and output arguments, which is not supported.
* The assembly files for SHA1, SHA256 and AES depend on ARMv6
instructions, breaking nettle-2.7 for pre-v6 ARM processors.
The configure script now enables those assembly files only
when building for ARMv6 or later.
* Use a more portable C expression for rotations. The
previous version used the following "standard" expression
for 32-bit rotation:
(x << n) | (x >> (32 - n))
But this gives undefined behavior (according to the C
specification) for n = 0. The rotate expression is replaced
by the more portable:
(x << n) | (x >> ((-n)&31))
This change affects only CAST128, which uses non-constant
rotation counts. Unfortunately, the new expression is poorly
optimized by released versions of gcc, making CAST128 a bit
slower. This is being fixed by the gcc hackers, see
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=57157.
The following problems have been reported, but are *not* fixed
in this release:
* ARM assembly files use instruction syntax which is not
supported by all assemblers. Workaround: Use a current
version of GNU as, or configure with --disable-assembler.
* Configuring with --disable-static doesn't work on windows.
The libraries are intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-2.2 and later. The shared library names are
libnettle.so.4.7 and libhogweed.so.2.5, with sonames still
libnettle.so.4 and libhogweed.so.2.
NEWS for the 2.7 release
This release includes an implementation of elliptic curve
cryptography (ECC) and optimizations for the ARM architecture.
This work was done at the offices of South Pole AB, and
generously funded by the .SE Internet Fund.
Bug fixes:
* Fixed a bug in the buffer handling for incremental SHA3
hashing, with a possible buffer overflow. Patch by Edgar
E. Iglesias.
New features:
* Support for ECDSA signatures. Elliptic curve operations over
the following curves: secp192r1, secp224r1, secp256r1,
secp384r1 and secp521r1, including x86_64 and ARM assembly
for the most important primitives.
* Support for UMAC, including x86_64 and ARM assembly.
* Support for 12-round salsa20, "salsa20r12", as specified by
eSTREAM. Contributed by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos.
Optimizations:
* ARM assembly code for several additional algorithms,
including AES, Salsa20, and the SHA family of hash
functions.
* x86_64 assembly for SHA256, SHA512, and SHA3. (SHA3 assembly
was included in the 2.6 release, but disabled due to poor
performance on some AMD processors. Hopefully, that
performance problem is fixed now).
The ARM code was tested and benchmarked on Cortex-A9. Some of
the functions use "neon" instructions. The configure script
decides if neon instructions can be used, and the command line
options --enable-arm-neon and --disable-arm-neon can be used
to override its choice. Feedback appreciated.
The libraries are intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-2.2 and later. The shared library names are
libnettle.so.4.6 and libhogweed.so.2.4, with sonames still
libnettle.so.4 and libhogweed.so.2.
NEWS for the 2.6 release
Bug fixes:
* Fixed a bug in ctr_crypt. For zero length (which should be a
NOP), it sometimes incremented the counter. Reported by Tim
Kosse.
* Fixed a small memory leak in nettle_realloc and
nettle_xrealloc.
New features:
* Support for PKCS #5 PBKDF2, to generate a key from a
password or passphrase. Contributed by Simon Josefsson.
Specification in RFC 2898 and test vectors in RFC 6070.
* Support for SHA3.
* Support for the GOST R 34.11-94 hash algorithm. Ported from
librhash by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos. Written by Aleksey
Kravchenko. More information in RFC4357. Test vectors taken
from the GOST hash wikipedia page.
Miscellaneous:
* The include file <nettle/sha.h> has been split into
<nettle/sha1.h> and <nettle/sha2.h>. For now, sha.h is kept
for backwards compatibility and it simply includes both
files, but applications are encouraged to use the new names.
The new SHA3 functions are declared in <nettle/sha3.h>.
* Testsuite can be run under valgrind, using
make check EMULATOR='$(VALGRIND)'
For this to work, test programs and other executables now
deallocate storage.
* New configure options --disable-documentation and
--disable-static. Contributed by Sam Thursfield and Alon
Bar-Lev, respectively.
* The section on hash functions in the manual is split into
separate nodes for recommended hash functions and legacy
hash functions.
* Various smaller improvements, most of them portability
fixes. Credits go to David Woodhouse, Tim Rühsen, Martin
Storsjö, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos, Fredrik Thulin and Dennis
Clarke.
Finally, a note on the naming of the various "SHA" hash
functions. Naming is a bit inconsistent; we have, e.g.,
SHA1: sha1_digest
SHA2: sha256_digest (not sha2_256_digest)
SHA3: sha3_256_digest
Renaming the SHA2 functions to make Nettle's naming more
consistent has been considered, but the current naming follows
common usage. Most documents (including the specification for
SHA2) refer to 256-bit SHA2 as "SHA-256" or "SHA256" rather
than "SHA2-256".
The libraries are intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-2.2 and later. The shared library names are
libnettle.so.4.5 and libhogweed.so.2.3, with sonames still
libnettle.so.4 and libhogweed.so.2
NEWS for the 2.5 release
This release includes important portability fixes for Windows
and MacOS. There are also a few new features.
First a *warning*: Some internal functions have been removed
from the library. Since the functions in question are internal
and not documented, this is not considered a change of ABI or
API. Programs explicitly using any of these functions will
break.
* The function pkcs1_signature_prefix has been renamed to
_pkcs1_signature_prefix, and with slightly different
behavior.
* The file nettle-internal.c is no longer included in the
library (the features defined there are used by the
benchmark and test programs, and were never intended for
public use).
New features:
* Support for the salsa20 stream cipher, including x86_64
assembler. Originally contributed by Simon Josefsson, based
on the reference implementation, then further optimized.
* Tentative interface for timing-resistant RSA functions,
contributed by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos.
* A more general interface for PKCS#1 signatures, taking the
input in the form of a "DigestInfo". Suggested by Nikos
Mavrogiannopoulos.
Configuration:
* Building of shared libraries (./configure --enable-shared)
is now enabled by default.
* Various portability fixes for MacOS and M$ Windows. A lot of
this work done by Martin Storsjö.
* In particular, Nettle now hopefully works on 64-bit Windows
builds, "W64", including the x86_64 assembly code.
Miscellaneous:
* Documentation and example programs for the base16 and base64
functions. Was contributed by Jeronimo Pellegrini back in
2006, but unfortunately forgotten until now.
* Use an additional table to avoid GF2^8 multiplications in
aes_invert_key (mainly used by aes_set_decrypt_key). Also
tabulate round constants in aes_set_encrypt_key.
* The nettle repository has been migrated from cvs to git,
with a public repository at
http://git.lysator.liu.se/nettle. To make it independent of
the LSH repository, a few files have been moved around.
While at it, files have also been converted from latin-1 to
utf-8.
The libraries are intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-2.2 and later. The shared library names are
libnettle.so.4.4 and libhogweed.so.2.2, with sonames still
libnettle.so.4 and libhogweed.so.2
NEWS for the 2.4 release
This is a bugfix release only. It turned out ripemd160 in the
2.3 release was broken on all big-endian systems, due to a
missing include of config.h. nettle-2.4 fixes this.
The library is intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-2.2 and nettle-2.3. The shared library names are
libnettle.so.4.3 and libhogweed.so.2.1, with sonames still
libnettle.so.4 and libhogweed.so.2.
NEWS for the 2.3 release
* Support for the ripemd-160 hash function.
* Generates and installs nettle.pc and hogweed.pc files, for
use with pkg-config. Feedback appreciated. For projects
using autoconf, the traditional non-pkg-config ways of
detecting libraries, and setting LIBS and LDFLAGS, is still
recommended.
* Fixed a bug which made the testsuite fail in the GCM test on
certain platforms. Should not affect any documented features
of the library.
* Reorganization of the code for the various Merkle-Damgård
hash functions. Some fields in the context structs for md4,
md5 and sha1 have been renamed, for consistency.
Applications should not peek inside these structs, and the
ABI is unchanged.
* In the manual, fixed mis-placed const in certain function
prototypes.
The library is intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-2.2. The shared library names are libnettle.so.4.2 and
libhogweed.so.2.1, with sonames still libnettle.so.4 and
libhogweed.so.2.
NEWS for the 2.2 release
Licensing change:
* Relicensed as LGPL v2.1 or later (user's option).
* Replaced blowfish and serpent implementation. New code is
based on the LGPLed code in libgcrypt.
New features:
* Support for Galois/Counter Mode (GCM).
* New interface for enumerating (most) available algorithms,
contributed by Daniel Kahn Gillmor.
* New tool nettle-hash. Can generate hash digests using any
supported hash function, with output compatible with md5sum
and friends from GNU coreutils. Checking (like md5sum -c)
not yet implemented.
Bug fixes:
* The old serpent code had a byte order bug (introduced by
yours truly about ten years ago). New serpent implementation
does not interoperate with earlier versions of nettle.
* Fixed ABI-dependent libdir default for Linux-based systems
which do not follow the Linux File Hierarchy Standard, e.g.,
Debian GNU/Linux.
Optimizations:
* x86_64 implemention of serpent.
* x86_64 implemention of camellia.
* Optimized memxor using word rather than byte operations.
Both generic C and x86_64 assembler.
* Eliminated a memcpy for in-place CBC decrypt.
Miscellaneous:
* In command line tools, no longer support -? for requesting
help, since using it without shell quoting is a dangerous
habit. Use long option --help instead.
The shared library names are libnettle.so.4.1 and
libhogweed.so.2.1, with sonames libnettle.so.4 and
libhogweed.so.2.
NEWS for the 2.1 release
*Important*: this release breaks source and binary
compatibility for the digital signature functions, and for the
DES and BLOWFISH ciphers which have weak keys.
Incompatible changes:
* The functions rsa_md5_sign, rsa_sha1_sign and
rsa_sha256_sign, and the corresponding _digest variants, now
have a return value which callers should check. The functions
return failure if the key is too small for the type of
signature.
* The functions dsa_sign and dsa_verify are renamed to
dsa_sha1_sign and dsa_sha1_verify. The _-digest variants are
renamed similarly. These functions now have a return value
which callers should check, and they return failure if the
number q is not of the appropriate size.
* The return value from des_set_key, des3_set_key and
blowfish_set_key now indicates whether or not the given key
is weak. But in either case, the key setup is done, and
applications that don't care about weak keys can ignore the
return value.
The incompatible part of this change is that enum des_error
and enum blowfish_error has been deleted, and so has the
status attribute in struct des_ctx, struct des3_ctx, and
struct blowfish_ctx.
The shared library names are libnettle.so.4.0 and
libhogweed.so.2.0, with sonames libnettle.so.4 and
libhogweed.so.2.
Other changes:
* Support for the Camellia block cipher, including an
assembler implementation for x86_32.
* New function aes_invert_key, useful for applications that
need both encryption and decryption using the same AES key.
* des_set_key and des3_set_key no longer check the key parity
bits. Parity bits are silently ignored. A new function
des_check_parity is provided, for applications that care
about the DES parity bits.
* Support for sha224, sha384 and sha512.
* Support for digital signatures using rsa-sha512 and
dsa-sha256. Due to lack of official test vectors and interop
testing, this support should be considered somewhat
experimental.
* Key generation for RSA and DSA changed to use Maurer's
algorithm to generate provably prime numbers (as usual, the
mathematical proof does not guaranteee that the
implementation is bug free).
* x86_64 assembler implementation actually included in the
distribution (was accidentally left out in nettle-2.0).
* Configure script now detects if the compiler uses a 32-bit
or 64-bit ABI on x86_64 (prevously did this for sparc only).
Also sets the default location for installing libraries
(libdir) depending on system type and the ABI used.
* Added the nettle and gmp libraries as dependencies when
linking shared library libhogweed.so. On systems using
shared libraries where such dependencies work (in
particular, ELF systems), it is sufficient to link
applications with -lhogweed. For static linking -lhogweed
-lnettle -lgmp is still required.
* The program pkcs1-conv is extended to also handle dsa keys.
Contributed by Magnus Holmgren.
* Slightly improved sha1 performance on x86.
NEWS for the 2.0 release
This release breaks binary compatibility by splitting the
library into two. Some other smaller changes that are not
backwards compatible are also done at the same time.
* The nettle library is split into two libraries, libnettle
and libhogweed. libnettle contains the symmetric crypto
algorithms that don't depend on GMP, while libhogweed
contains the public key algorithms that depend on GMP.
Using a single library worked fine with static linking, but
not with dynamic linking. Consider an application that uses
nettle and which doesn't use any public key cryptography. If
this application is linked dynamically to nettle, it would
have to be linked also with GMP if and only if public key
support was enabled when the nettle library was installed.
The library names are libnettle.so.3.0 and
libhogweed.so.1.0, with sonames libnettle.so.3 and
libhogweed.so.1.
* Function typedefs have been changed to non-pointer types.
E.g, the
typedef void (nettle_hash_init_func *)(void *ctx);
of previous versions is replaced by
typedef void (nettle_hash_init_func)(void *ctx);
This makes it possible to use the type when declaring
functions, like
nettle_hash_init_func foo_hash_init;
void foo_hash_init(void *ctx) { ... }
* Changes to the yarrow256 interface. The automatic seed file
generation, and the seed_file member in struct
yarrow256_ctx, has been removed. To generate a new seed
file, use yarrow256_random. The function
yarrow256_force_reseed has been replaced by the two
functions yarrow256_fast_reseed and yarrow256_slow_reseed,
which were previously static. This interface change makes it
easier to mix in the current content of the seed file before
overwriting it with newly generated data.
Other changes:
* Nettle manual now contributed to the public domain, to
enable remixing into documentation of programs that use
Nettle.
* The sexp-conv program preserves comments when using the
advanced syntax for output. Optionally locks the output
file.
* The base64 decoder recognizes ASCII FF (form feed) and VT
(vertical tab) as white space.
* New x86_64 implementations of AES and SHA1. On a 2.2 GHz
opteron, SHA1 was benchmarked at 250 MByte/s, and AES-128 at
110 MByte/s.
* Performance of AES increased by 20-30% on x86.
* New programs in the examples directory: erathostenes and
next-prime.
NEWS for the 1.15 release
Added support for PKCS#1 style RSA signatures using SHA256,
according to RFC 3447. Currently lacks interoperability
testing.
Header files are now C++ aware, so C++ programs using Nettle
should now use plain
#include <nettle/foo.h>
rather than
#extern "C" {
#include <nettle/foo.h>
}
as was the recommendation for the previous version. This
breaks source-level compatibility with C++, even though
there's full binary compatibility.
The file rfc1750.txt (which is considered non-free by debian)
has been removed from the distribution. The file was used as input
for the Yarrow testcase, and has been replaced by the short
story "The Gold-bug" by Edgar Allan Poe. Anyway, RFC 1750 is
obsoleted by RFC 4086.
Fixes for Darwin shared library support, contributed by Grant
Robinsson.
Example programs now use a supplied getopt.c.
Configure tests for assemblers with a logarithmic .align
directive.
The library is intended to be upwards binary compatible with
earlier versions. The library name is libnettle.so.2.6, soname
is still libnettle.so.2.
NEWS for the 1.14 release
Experimental support for reading keys in PKCS#1 ASN1/DER
format, and a new command line tool pkcs1-conv.
Improved MD5 performance on x86.
Fixed support for sparc64.
Reorganized AES code. Better performance for all three
implementations (C, x86 assembler, sparc assembler).
New sparc assembler for arcfour. Compared to the code
generated by gcc, the new code is about 25% faster on old
sparcs, and 6 times faster on ultrasparc.
Replaced the internal function nettle_mpz_from_octets with a
call to mpz_import, if available in the installed GMP library.
More Makefile fixes; it now seems to work to build with
the the make programs on Solaris and FreeBSD (although
--disable-dependency-tracking is required for the latter).
The library is intended to be binary compatible with earlier
versions. The library name is libnettle.so.2.5, soname is
still libnettle.so.2.
NEWS for the 1.13 release
Fixed problem with broken m4 on bsd, which resulted in
corrupted x86 assembler for sha1.
Nettle probably works on windows: I've been able to cross
compile it with ./configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc (without
public-key support), and the testsuite binaries seem to run
fine in Wine.
Implemented CTR mode.
Improved sha1 performance on x86.
Configure check to figure out if symbols in assembler files
need a leading underscore.
Improved benchmark program. Displays cycles per byte and block,
and compares with openssl (if openssl is installed).
Terminating newline in output from sexp-conv --hash.
The library is intended to be binary compatible with earlier
versions. The library name is libnettle.so.2.4. However, the
interface for the internal function _nettle_sha1_compress has
changed; any program that calls this function directly will
break.
NEWS for the 1.12 release
Fixed a bug in the configure script.
Updated the description of aes_set_encrypt_key and
aes_set_decrypt_key in the manual.
NEWS for the 1.11 release
Nettle no longer uses automake. Side effects:
* Dependency tracking is enabled only for gcc-3 (help with
supporting dependency tracking with other compilers is
appreciated).
* Makefile compatibility with make programs other than GNU
make is mostly unknown, please report any problems.
Support for arctwo.
Fixes to the libdes compatibility code. Declarations should
now match openssl/libdes better. des_cbc_cksum pads
input with NUL's, if it's not an integral number of blocks (in
general, such unreversible padding is a bad idea).
By default, also the static library is compiled as position
independent code. This is needed on some systems to make it
possible to link nettle into a dynamically loaded module. Use
the configure flag --disable-pic if this is not desired.
Stricter constness typing for the sexp_iterator_assoc and
sexp_iterator_check_types arguments.
Minor tweaks of arcfour on x86 cpu:s, to speed it up on older
x86 variants such as PII and PPro.
The shared library is intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-1.8 - nettle-1.10. Only the minor version number of the
shared library is increased. The soname is still
libnettle.so.2.
NEWS for the 1.10 release
Nettle should now compile also on Tru64, Darwin, FreeBSD and
Windows. (The only tested windows build uses the rntcl rsh
wrapper to run the command line M$ C compiler "cl". See
http://pike.ida.liu.se for those tools, I don't know all
details about the Pike team's windows setup).
There are some known testsuite failures, on Windows and on one
of the xenofarm HPUX machines, see
http://www.lysator.liu.se/~nisse/xeno-lsh/latest.html. Help
tracking these down is appreciated.
There are no new features.
This release is intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-1.8 and nettle-1.9.
NEWS for the 1.9 release
Optimized C implementation of arcfour. Optimized x86
implementations of arcfour and sha1.
Improved benchmark program.
Fixed bug in the rsa-encrypt example program.
Fixed bug in make install, some of the header files were
forgotten.
Portability fixes. Fixes to make Nettle compile on systems
without gmp. This version has been tested on GNU/Linux,
Solaris, HPUX and AIX.
The shared library is intended to be binary compatible with
nettle-1.8. Only the minor version number of the shared
library is increased.
NEWS for the 1.8 release
New example programs, demonstrating encrypting and decrypting
files using RSA, and random sessions keys for bulk encryption
and message authentication.
Support for systems that don't have alloca. On such systems,
some of Nettle's functions have arbitrary limits applied to
their input.
Uses AX_CREATE_STDINT_H, to support systems without
inttypes.h.
Support for the md2 and md4 hash functions.
New name mangling, to reduce the risk of link collisions. All
functions (except memxor) now use a nettle_ or _nettle_ prefix
when seen by the linker. For most functions, the header file
that declares a function also uses #define to provide a
shorter more readable name without the prefix.
The shared library soname for this version is libnettle.so.2.
NEWS for the 1.7 release
Implemented DSA.
Renamed RSA functions for consistency. Now it's
rsa_public_key_init, not rsa_init_public_key, etc.
Both RSA and DSA now have sign/verify functions that take the
hash digest as argument.
A rewritten and much more powerful sexp-conv program.
Other changes to the sexp code, in particular updating it to
the latest SPKI draft.
Building nettle as a shared library (ELF only) seems to work.
The version number is increased, so the library "soname" for
this release is "libnettle.so.1".
Bugfixes. Fixes for build and portability problems.
NEWS for the 1.6 release
Optimized assembler implementations of aes, for sparc and x86.
The aes interface has changed slightly. The function
aes_set_key is no more. Instead one has to use
aes_set_encrypt_key or aes_set_decrypt_key. Sorry about that.
New example programs, rsa-keygen, rsa-sign and rsa-verify,
located in the examples directory.
New configure option --enable-shared, which builds a shared
library. Not tested.
New experimental features, including sexp parsing and
formatting, and changes to base64 encoding and decoding. The
interfaces to these functions are subject to change, and are
documented only in the source code.
NEWS for the 1.5 release
RSA support. Key generation and signatures.
Support for HMAC (RFC-2104).
An implementation of the Yarrow-256 PRNG.
New sections in the manual.
Changed the interface for hash functions. The md5_digest
function is now equivalent to the old sequence of md5_final,
md5_digest, md5_init, and similarly for the other hashing
algorithms. This makes the interface simpler.
NEWS for the 1.0 release
Fixed twofish bug spotted by Jean-Pierre Stierlin.
Added des3 and cbc.
New RFC-1321-like interface in nettle/md5-compat.h, suggested
by Assar Westerlund.
New libdes-style compatibility interface in nettle/des-compat.h.
Mini Shell