Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Advancements (long-winded)

[Brian H. <bri...@ql...>]

On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, William D. Neumann wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Brian Hurt wrote:
> 
> > - bitset is being rewritten into bitarray, with the new features suggested
> > by the change in name.  The goal is to produce something you could write
> > elliptic curve cryptosystems in at least semi-efficiently.
> 
> Umm...when you say EC cryptosystems, I assume you're just talking about a
> package that's good for doing generic work over GF(2^n), right?  That'd be
> pretty handy to have around...

Yes.  That is precisely what I meant.  EC crypto is just the hardest, most 
complicated, most performance important GF computations I know of.

> 
> - Repackage some stuff to create a byte-array type with easy conversion
>   between 8bits/byte (for working with internally) 4bits/byte (for working
>   with in a readible format), and appropriate manipulation routines
>   (shifts, rotates, boolean functions, etc.).  I need to put more thought
>   into this, I've just been tossing things together in an ad-hoc fashion
>   when I need something for work -- perhaps your bitarrays would be all
>   that I'm really looking for.

Hmm.  Should add a function to return bits n..n+k with k <= Sys.word_size 
as a combined in.  And set and invert as well.

> - Add other ciphers like Blowfish, RC5, and some of the AES and NESSIE
>   applicants.  I'd like to add SEAL, but I'm not sure what IBM's stance is
>   on its licensing is.

Blowfish I'm less interested in.  I'm a fan of Twofish myself- especially 
given some of the weaknesses discovered in AES/Rijndael recently...

> - Add some more number theory tools (so far all I have is CRT-enabled
>   modular exponentiation used in the RSA module).

I'd like an easy, reasonably fast, library to find primitive polys in 
GF(2^n) for some n.

> * Added two new PRNGs (the crappy GMP default PRNG -- good for testing --
>   and a stronger, slower PRNG described by Peter Guttman)

Is there a Yarrow-based PRNG?

Brian