path: root/NEWS

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.