README

   1
   2  OpenSSL 1.1.0-dev
   3
   4  Copyright (c) 1998-2015 The OpenSSL Project
   5  Copyright (c) 1995-1998 Eric A. Young, Tim J. Hudson
   6  All rights reserved.
   7
   8  DESCRIPTION
   9  -----------
  10
  11  The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust,
  12  commercial-grade, fully featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the
  13  Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1)
  14  protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library.
  15  The project is managed by a worldwide community of volunteers that use the
  16  Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenSSL toolkit and its
  17  related documentation.
  18
  19  OpenSSL is based on the excellent SSLeay library developed from Eric A. Young
  20  and Tim J. Hudson.  The OpenSSL toolkit is licensed under a dual-license (the
  21  OpenSSL license plus the SSLeay license) situation, which basically means
  22  that you are free to get and use it for commercial and non-commercial
  23  purposes as long as you fulfill the conditions of both licenses.
  24
  25  OVERVIEW
  26  --------
  27
  28  The OpenSSL toolkit includes:
  29
  30  libssl.a:
  31      Implementation of SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1 and the required code to support
  32      both SSLv2, SSLv3 and TLSv1 in the one server and client.
  33
  34  libcrypto.a:
  35      General encryption and X.509 v1/v3 stuff needed by SSL/TLS but not
  36      actually logically part of it. It includes routines for the following:
  37
  38      Ciphers
  39         libdes - EAY's libdes DES encryption package which was floating
  40                  around the net for a few years, and was then relicensed by
  41                  him as part of SSLeay.  It includes 15 'modes/variations'
  42                  of DES (1, 2 and 3 key versions of ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb;
  43                  pcbc and a more general form of cfb and ofb) including desx
  44                  in cbc mode, a fast crypt(3), and routines to read
  45                  passwords from the keyboard.
  46         RC4 encryption,
  47         RC2 encryption      - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb.
  48         Blowfish encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb.
  49         IDEA encryption     - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb.
  50
  51      Digests
  52         MD5 and MD2 message digest algorithms, fast implementations,
  53         SHA (SHA-0) and SHA-1 message digest algorithms,
  54         MDC2 message digest. A DES based hash that is popular on smart cards.
  55
  56      Public Key
  57         RSA encryption/decryption/generation.
  58             There is no limit on the number of bits.
  59         DSA encryption/decryption/generation.
  60             There is no limit on the number of bits.
  61         Diffie-Hellman key-exchange/key generation.
  62             There is no limit on the number of bits.
  63
  64      X.509v3 certificates
  65         X509 encoding/decoding into/from binary ASN1 and a PEM
  66              based ASCII-binary encoding which supports encryption with a
  67              private key.  Program to generate RSA and DSA certificate
  68              requests and to generate RSA and DSA certificates.
  69
  70      Systems
  71         The normal digital envelope routines and base64 encoding.  Higher
  72         level access to ciphers and digests by name.  New ciphers can be
  73         loaded at run time.  The BIO io system which is a simple non-blocking
  74         IO abstraction.  Current methods supported are file descriptors,
  75         sockets, socket accept, socket connect, memory buffer, buffering, SSL
  76         client/server, file pointer, encryption, digest, non-blocking testing
  77         and null.
  78
  79      Data structures
  80         A dynamically growing hashing system
  81         A simple stack.
  82         A Configuration loader that uses a format similar to MS .ini files.
  83
  84  openssl:
  85      A command line tool that can be used for:
  86         Creation of RSA, DH and DSA key parameters
  87         Creation of X.509 certificates, CSRs and CRLs
  88         Calculation of Message Digests
  89         Encryption and Decryption with Ciphers
  90         SSL/TLS Client and Server Tests
  91         Handling of S/MIME signed or encrypted mail
  92
  93  INSTALLATION
  94  ------------
  95
  96  To install this package under a Unix derivative, read the INSTALL file.  For
  97  a Win32 platform, read the INSTALL.W32 file.  For OpenVMS systems, read
  98  INSTALL.VMS.
  99
 100  Read the documentation in the doc/ directory.  It is quite rough, but it
 101  lists the functions; you will probably have to look at the code to work out
 102  how to use them. Look at the example programs.
 103
 104  PROBLEMS
 105  --------
 106
 107  For some platforms, there are some known problems that may affect the user
 108  or application author.  We try to collect those in doc/PROBLEMS, with current
 109  thoughts on how they should be solved in a future of OpenSSL.
 110
 111  SUPPORT
 112  -------
 113
 114  See the OpenSSL website www.openssl.org for details of how to obtain
 115  commercial technical support.
 116
 117  If you have any problems with OpenSSL then please take the following steps
 118  first:
 119
 120     - Download the current snapshot from ftp://ftp.openssl.org/snapshot/
 121       to see if the problem has already been addressed
 122     - Remove ASM versions of libraries
 123     - Remove compiler optimisation flags
 124
 125  If you wish to report a bug then please include the following information in
 126  any bug report:
 127
 128     - On Unix systems:
 129         Self-test report generated by 'make report'
 130     - On other systems:
 131         OpenSSL version: output of 'openssl version -a'
 132         OS Name, Version, Hardware platform
 133         Compiler Details (name, version)
 134     - Application Details (name, version)
 135     - Problem Description (steps that will reproduce the problem, if known)
 136     - Stack Traceback (if the application dumps core)
 137
 138  Email the report to:
 139
 140     rt@openssl.org
 141
 142  In order to avoid spam, this is a moderated mailing list, and it might
 143  take a day for the ticket to show up.  (We also scan posts to make sure
 144  that security disclosures aren't publically posted by mistake.) Mail to
 145  this address is recorded in the public RT (request tracker) database (see
 146  https://www.openssl.org/support/rt.html for details) and also forwarded
 147  the public openssl-dev mailing list.  Confidential mail may be sent to
 148  openssl-security@openssl.org (PGP key available from the key servers).
 149
 150  Please do NOT use this for general assistance or support queries.
 151  Just because something doesn't work the way you expect does not mean it
 152  is necessarily a bug in OpenSSL.
 153
 154  You can also make GitHub pull requests. If you do this, please also send
 155  mail to rt@openssl.org with a link to the PR so that we can more easily
 156  keep track of it.
 157
 158  HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO OpenSSL
 159  ----------------------------
 160
 161  See CONTRIBUTING