README

   1
   2  OpenSSL 0.9.2 31-Dec-1998
   3
   4  Copyright (c) 1998 The OpenSSL Project
   5  Copyright (c) 1995-1998 Eric A. Young, Tim J. Hudson
   6  All rights reserved.
   7
   8  ....
   9
  10  The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust,
  11  commercial-grade, fully featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the
  12  Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3)
  13  protocols with full-strength cryptography world-wide. The project is managed
  14  by a worldwide community of volunteers that use the Internet to communicate,
  15  plan, and develop the OpenSSL tookit and its related documentation.
  16
  17  OpenSSL is based on the excellent SSLeay library developed from Eric A. Young
  18  and Tim J. Hudson.  The OpenSSL toolkit is licensed under a BSD-style licence,
  19  which basically means that you are free to get and use it for commercial and
  20  non-commercial purposes.
  21
  22  The package includes:
  23
  24  libssl.a:
  25      Implementation of SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1 and the required code to support
  26      both SSLv2, SSLv3 and TLSv1 in the one server.
  27
  28  libcrypto.a:
  29      General encryption and X.509 stuff needed by TLS/SSL but not actually
  30      logically part of it. It includes routines for the following:
  31
  32      Ciphers
  33         libdes - EAY's libdes DES encryption package which has been floating
  34                  around the net for a few years.  It includes 15
  35                  'modes/variations' of DES (1, 2 and 3 key versions of ecb,
  36                  cbc, cfb and ofb; pcbc and a more general form of cfb and
  37                  ofb) including desx in cbc mode, a fast crypt(3), and
  38                  routines to read passwords from the keyboard.
  39         RC4 encryption,
  40         RC2 encryption      - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb.
  41         Blowfish encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb.
  42         IDEA encryption     - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb.
  43
  44      Digests
  45         MD5 and MD2 message digest algorithms, fast implementations,
  46         SHA (SHA-0) and SHA-1 message digest algorithms,
  47         MDC2 message digest. A DES based hash that is polular on smart cards.
  48
  49      Public Key
  50         RSA encryption/decryption/generation.
  51             There is no limit on the number of bits.
  52         DSA encryption/decryption/generation.
  53             There is no limit on the number of bits.
  54         Diffie-Hellman key-exchange/key generation.
  55             There is no limit on the number of bits.
  56
  57      X.509v3 certificates
  58         X509 encoding/decoding into/from binary ASN1 and a PEM
  59              based ascii-binary encoding which supports encryption with a
  60              private key.  Program to generate RSA and DSA certificate
  61              requests and to generate RSA and DSA certificates.
  62
  63      Systems
  64         The normal digital envelope routines and base64 encoding.  Higher
  65         level access to ciphers and digests by name.  New ciphers can be
  66         loaded at run time.  The BIO io system which is a simple non-blocking
  67         IO abstraction.  Current methods supported are file descriptors,
  68         sockets, socket accept, socket connect, memory buffer, buffering, SSL
  69         client/server, file pointer, encryption, digest, non-blocking testing
  70         and null.
  71
  72      Data structures
  73         A dynamically growing hashing system
  74         A simple stack.
  75         A Configuration loader that uses a format similar to MS .ini files.
  76
  77  Programs in this package include:
  78
  79      enc     - a general encryption program that can encrypt/decrypt using
  80                one of 17 different cipher/mode combinations.  The
  81                input/output can also be converted to/from base64
  82                ascii encoding.
  83      dgst    - a generate message digesting program that will generate
  84                message digests for any of md2, md5, sha (sha-0 or sha-1)
  85                or mdc2.
  86      asn1parse - parse and display the structure of an asn1 encoded
  87                binary file.
  88      rsa     - Manipulate RSA private keys.
  89      dsa     - Manipulate DSA private keys.
  90      dh      - Manipulate Diffie-Hellman parameter files.
  91      dsaparam- Manipulate and generate DSA parameter files.
  92      crl     - Manipulate certificate revocation lists.
  93      crt2pkcs7- Generate a pkcs7 object containing a crl and a certificate.
  94      x509    - Manipulate x509 certificates, self-sign certificates.
  95      req     - Manipulate PKCS#10 certificate requests and also
  96                generate certificate requests.
  97      genrsa  - Generates an arbitrary sized RSA private key.
  98      gendsa  - Generates DSA parameters.
  99      gendh   - Generates a set of Diffie-Hellman parameters, the prime
 100                will be a strong prime.
 101      ca      - Create certificates from PKCS#10 certificate requests.
 102                This program also maintains a database of certificates
 103                issued.
 104      verify  - Check x509 certificate signatures.
 105      speed   - Benchmark OpenSSL's ciphers.
 106      s_server- A test SSL server.
 107      s_client- A test SSL client.
 108      s_time  - Benchmark SSL performance of SSL server programs.
 109      errstr  - Convert from OpenSSL hex error codes to a readable form.
 110      nseq    - Netscape certificate sequence utility
 111
 112 To install this package, read the INSTALL file.
 113 For the Microsoft world, read INSTALL.W32 file.
 114
 115 For people in the USA, it is possible to compile OpenSSL to use RSA Inc.'s
 116 public key library, RSAref. Read doc/ssleay.txt under 'rsaref.doc' on how to
 117 build with RSAref.
 118
 119 Read the documentation in the doc directory.  It is quite rough, but it lists
 120 the functions, you will probably have to look at the code to work out how to
 121 used them. Look at the example programs.
 122