mcrypt / News: Recent posts

it's been quiet for some time, so I thought I'd do another round-up on the news. The CVS tree has gained a number of new algorithms and encryption modes, including sober, t-class sober, camellia, ocb and pmac. Existing project members get first pick on which they want to hook into the mcrypt API. Anyone who's interested is welcome to have a go. If nobody comes forward with other algorithms to include, I shall consider the current set to be final for the next release.... read more

The major project news for September 27th - the number of developers is steadily growing. With all the code in CVS and under active development, this is good news. If you're not a developer for mcrypt or mcryptlib, but have the time and interest, we can always do with the extra help. The layout for libmcrypt has changed, hopefully making things easier. Work on reducing redundancy is continuing. Not much in the way of totally new code to report, apart from the checking in of the un-ported sources for Rainbow - a three-stage cryptographic algorithm. The home web pages are under development, and will eventually migrate to being served from a database. The idea is to have only the information you want on the algorithms you're interested in actually shown. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of noise and very little signal. Mailing lists for users, core developers and module developers have been set up, and should be running later today. The files currently available for download are -un-compressed tarballs at the time of writing - you can stop letting me know, now! :) - and this will be fixed shortly. There will be a news item to say when the correct files are uploaded. A developer release will be made when the structure is finalized for libmcrypt. This will have the preliminary API to support public key encryption (although don't expect any functions to be implemented) and benchmarking. Bugs not otherwise mentioned above are high on the priority list. There aren't that many, for now, so we should be able to fix those problems by the first developer release. Parallelism, acceleration and cluster support will seep their way into the code as time allows, along with some level of support for cryprographic and security-related kernel projects. The sheer number of things that are essential, however, is going to put some limits on non-essential refinements, unless we can get volunteers who are interested specifically in those things.

The crypto package "MCrypt" has moved to Sourceforge, for ease of development and improved Internet connectivity. Coders who can help with porting in new algorithms/modes are welcome, as are any speed-up wizards. The relaxation of export regulations, with regards to Open Source crypto, means that this software can be downloaded from outside of the US, proviso on the downloader not being a Bad Person or from a Bad Country.