Re: ITARs and the Export of Classes and Methods

At 11:49 AM 4/30/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:
>An interesting situation for the ITARs, if they try to restrict bignum
>classes, for example. A class-based system, if done correctly (in whatever
>language, e.g., C++ or Java), should have _most_ of the hard crypto work
>already implemented in classes and methods (for bignums, modular
>exponentiation, etc.), with the final crypto program much more easily
>implemented and exported.

Certain languages, e.g. Smalltalk, and I believe lisp and scheme, have
bignums as a built-in type.  (Or more specifically, their integer types are
limited in size only by available memory.)  I believe these languages are
freely exportable.

Your problem stays here in the good ol' USA.  You can't implement RSA
directly in these languages (I assume RSA in perl has the same problem),
because of the patent restrictions.  Yet another reason to buy a T-shirt.

Regards - Bill


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Bill Frantz       | The CDA means  | Periwinkle  --  Computer Consulting
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Bill Franz writes:
>  Certain languages, e.g. Smalltalk, and I believe lisp and
>  scheme, have bignums as a built-in type.  (Or more specifically,
>  their integer types are limited in size only by available
>  memory.)  I believe these languages are freely exportable.

The Python programming language has built-in support for multiple bignum  
packages (including the GNU MPZ library).  It also has MD5 built-in.  Andrew  
Kuchling also has written a nice crypto package that gives you access to a  
lot of good crypto primitives.  The language was written in the Netherlands,  
is free to use for any purpose (commercial or otherwise), easily runs on  
EVERYTHING (Mac, DOS, Windoze, NT, just about any flavor of unix, etc...), is  
embeddable, and has a Nutshell book about to be published.  Check it out...


andrew