Re: building libraries

At 08:40 PM 7/28/95 -0400, Alex Tang wrote:
>> The answer is to have some non-USA entity build shareable full fledged 
>> full powered crypto libraries and provide them for free for the rest of 
>> the world and for all machines.
>Wouldn't there still be licensing issues to deal with (in the states at
>least)??  I'm sure RSA would claim that the package would be in violation
>of the licensing...

If you did everything in an RSAREF-compatible manner, that would help;
I think somebody outside the US has written an RSAREF-clone.
Some problems include building programs that have generic-callout hooks
instead of crypto-specific hooks (so that they don't get bitten by ITAR),
while still maintaining reasonable efficiency and convenience.

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On Mon Jul 31 01:25:04 1995: you scribbled...
> 
> At 08:40 PM 7/28/95 -0400, Alex Tang wrote:
> >> The answer is to have some non-USA entity build shareable full fledged 
> >> full powered crypto libraries and provide them for free for the rest of 
> >> the world and for all machines.
> >Wouldn't there still be licensing issues to deal with (in the states at
> >least)??  I'm sure RSA would claim that the package would be in violation
> >of the licensing...
> 
> If you did everything in an RSAREF-compatible manner, that would help;
> I think somebody outside the US has written an RSAREF-clone.
> Some problems include building programs that have generic-callout hooks
> instead of crypto-specific hooks (so that they don't get bitten by ITAR),
> while still maintaining reasonable efficiency and convenience.

Yeah, this would work for everyone except commercial institutions within
the states.  They'd have to get a license agreement for RSA.

...alex...

     Alex Tang  altitude@cic.net   http://petrified.cic.net/~altitude
   CICNet: Unix Support / InfoSystems Services / WebMaster / Programmer
       Viz-It!: Software Developer (Check out http://vizit.cic.net)
  UM-ITD: TaX.500 Developer (Check out http://petrified.cic.net/tax500)
Unofficial SSL/HTTPD FAQ: http://petrified.cic.net/~altitude/ssl/ssl.saga.html

Perhaps we could convince Bill Gates to bundle RSAREF with all his 
Windoze OS's?  Ditto for Apple?

=================================================================93=======
 + ^ + |  Ray Arachelian | Amerika: The land of the Freeh. | \-_    _-/  |
  \|/  |sunder@escape.com| Where day by day, yet another   |  \  --  /   |
<--+-->|                 | Constitutional right vanishes.  |6 _\-  -/_  6|
  /|\  |    Just Say     |                                 |----\  /---- | 
 + v + | "No" to the NSA!| Jail the censor, not the author!|     \/      |
=======/---------------------------------------------------------VI------/
      /  I watched and weeped as the Exon bill passed, knowing that yet /
     / another freedom vanished before my eyes.  How soon before we see/
    /a full scale dictatorship in the name of decency? While the rest /
   /of_the_world_fights_FOR_freedom,_our_gov'ment_fights_our_freedom_/

On Sun, 30 Jul 1995, Bill Stewart wrote:

> If you did everything in an RSAREF-compatible manner, that would help;
> I think somebody outside the US has written an RSAREF-clone.
> Some problems include building programs that have generic-callout hooks
> instead of crypto-specific hooks (so that they don't get bitten by ITAR),
> while still maintaining reasonable efficiency and convenience.

One way to achieve this is to provide multi-layered generic "compression" 
hooks which get called in this manner:

 Compress[x](char *bufferin, size_t insize, char *bufferout, size_t *osize);

Then you chain several of these by alternating the in/out buffers, say 
something like this:

 for (i=0; i<MAXCOMPRESSORS; i+=2)
 {
  Compress[i](buffer1,size1,buffer2,&size2);
  Compress[i+1](buffer2,size2,buffer1,&size1);
 }

To decompress, you'd do something like this:

 for (i=MAXCOMPRESSORS-1; i; i-=2)
 {
  Decompress[i+1](buffer2,size2,buffer1,&size1);
  Decompress[i](buffer1,size1,buffer2,&size2);
 }

This lets you set up a chain of compressors, each compressing the output 
of the previous levels.  And what you do is allow these compressors to be 
external to the program!  (If one or more of those should be hooks to 
encrypt, well, hey, that's just a 'bug' ;-)

Basically this does C1(C2(C3(C4...CN(text)))))...) to compress the output of 
the previous compressors.  I would reccomend that the last in the set be 
the encryptors or else all the other compressors would fail. :-)

Now, would >THAT< be exportable?

=================================================================93=======
 + ^ + |  Ray Arachelian | Amerika: The land of the Freeh. | \-_    _-/  |
  \|/  |sunder@escape.com| Where day by day, yet another   |  \  --  /   |
<--+-->|                 | Constitutional right vanishes.  |6 _\-  -/_  6|
  /|\  |    Just Say     |                                 |----\  /---- | 
 + v + | "No" to the NSA!| Jail the censor, not the author!|     \/      |
=======/---------------------------------------------------------VI------/
      /  I watched and weeped as the Exon bill passed, knowing that yet /
     / another freedom vanished before my eyes.  How soon before we see/
    /a full scale dictatorship in the name of decency? While the rest /
   /of_the_world_fights_FOR_freedom,_our_gov'ment_fights_our_freedom_/