[Botan-announce] Botan 1.3.1

[Jack L. <ll...@ra...>]

I have (re-)learned a valuable lesson about release QA with 1.3.0; it didn't
even pass the built-in validation tests. Specifically, if PKCS8::load_key was
handed an unencrypted private key, it would go into an infinite loop. I have
thus both a) added the missing two lines of code so the keys load and b) added
failsafes so the PKCS #8 loader will give up after a few bad tries so this
can't happen again.

In addition, the 1.3.0 configure script would (for GCC) set the optimization
flags at -O, which is a little below the optimal range. This has also been
fixed. Other than the bug fixes, the only changes have been generalizations in
few parts of the DER encoder and a small cleanup related to the PEM encoder.

My current project-of-the-week (or quarter, more likely) is support for CMS
(RFC 3369), thus the DER/PEM changes. This is going to take a while, but I
think it will be a useful thing to have, since it provides a good default
message/file encryption scheme (ie, if you don't have a reason to use a
particular format, use CMS). Probably 1.3.2 will support for a few simple CMS
operations, but it will probably be at least a month or two before a decent and
featurful design forms.

I will be in Virginia interviewing for a job Wednesday and Thursday, so any
problems will probably not be resolved until the weekend.

Regards,
  Jack