[pycrypto] ANN: PyCrypto 2.1.0 alpha 1 released

[Dwayne C. Litzenberger]

PyCrypto 2.1.0alpha1 has been released.  Finally.

You can get it from the git repository:

   $ git clone git://git.pycrypto.org:9419/crypto/pycrypto-2.x.git
   $ cd pycrypto-2.x
   $ git checkout v2.0.1alpha1

You can also browse the git repository on the web:

   http://gitweb.pycrypto.org/?p=crypto/pycrypto-2.x.git;a=summary

Please test it and post your experiences to the PyCrypto mailing list:

   pycrypto at lists.dlitz.net

and/or file bug reports on Launchpad:

   https://bugs.launchpad.net/pycrypto

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of changes between 2.0.1 and 2.1.0alpha1:

   * This version supports Python versions 2.1 through 2.6.

   * Clarified copyright status of much of the existing code by tracking
     down Andrew M. Kuchling, Barry A. Warsaw, Jeethu Rao, Joris Bontje,
     Mark Moraes, Paul Swartz, Robey Pointer, and Wim Lewis and getting
     their permission to clarify the license/public-domain status of their
     contributions.  Many thanks to all involved!

   * Replaced the test suite with a new, comprehensive package
     (Crypto.SelfTest) that includes documentation about where its test
     vectors came from, or how they were derived.

     Use "python setup.py test" to run the tests after building.

   * API changes:

     - Added Crypto.version_info, which from now on will contain version
       information in a format similar to Python's sys.version_info.

     - Added a new random numbers API (Crypto.Random), and deprecated the
       old one (Crypto.Util.randpool.RandomPool), which was misused more
       often than not.

       The new API is used by invoking Crypto.Random.new() and then just
       reading from the file-like object that is returned.

       CAVEAT: To maintain the security of the PRNG, you must call
       Crypto.Random.atfork() in both the parent and the child processes
       whenever you use os.fork().  Otherwise, the parent and child will
       share copies of the same entropy pool, causing them to return the
       same results!  This is a limitation of Python, which does not
       provide readily-accessible hooks to os.fork().  It's also a
       limitation caused by the failure of operating systems to provide
       sufficiently fast, trustworthy sources of cryptographically-strong
       random numbers.

     - Crypto.PublicKey now raises ValueError/TypeError/RuntimeError
       instead of the various custom "error" exceptions

     - Removed the IDEA and RC5 modules due to software patents.  Debian
       has been doing this for a while

     - Added Crypto.Random.random, a strong version of the standard Python
      'random' module.

     - Added Crypto.Util.Counter, providing fast counter implementations
       for use with CTR-mode ciphers.

   * Bug fixes:

     - Fixed padding bug in SHA256; this resulted in bad digests whenever
       (the number of bytes hashed) mod 64 == 55.

     - Fixed a 32-bit limitation on the length of messages the SHA256 module
       could hash.

     - AllOrNothing: Fixed padding bug in digest()

     - Fixed a bad behaviour of the XOR cipher module: It would silently
       truncate all keys to 32 bytes.  Now it raises ValueError when the
       key is too long.

     - DSA: Added code to enforce FIPS 186-2 requirements on the size of
       the prime p

     - Fixed the winrandom module, which had been omitted from the build
       process, causing security problems for programs that misuse RandomPool.

     - Fixed infinite loop when attempting to generate RSA keys with an
       odd number of bits in the modulus.  (Not that you should do that.)

   * Clarified the documentation for Crypto.Util.number.getRandomNumber.

     Confusingly, this function does NOT return N random bits; It returns
     a random N-bit number, i.e. a random number between 2**(N-1) and
     (2**N)-1.

     Note that getRandomNumber is for internal use only and may be
     renamed or removed in future releases.

   * Replaced RIPEMD.c with a new implementation (RIPEMD160.c) to
     alleviate copyright concerns.

   * Replaced the DES/DES3 modules with ones based on libtomcrypt-1.16 to
     alleviate copyright concerns.

   * Replaced Blowfish.c with a new implementation to alleviate copyright
     concerns.

   * Added a string-XOR implementation written in C (Crypto.Util.strxor)
     and used it to speed up Crypto.Hash.HMAC

   * Converted documentation to reStructured Text.

   * Added epydoc configuration Doc/epydoc-config

   * setup.py now emits a warning when building without GMP.

   * Added pct-speedtest.py to the source tree for doing performance
     testing on the new code.

   * Cleaned up the code in several places.

Cheers!
  - Dwayne

-- 
Dwayne C. Litzenberger <dlitz at dlitz.net>
  Key-signing key   - 19E1 1FE8 B3CF F273 ED17  4A24 928C EC13 39C2 5CF7