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.
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