[TCLCORE] ANNOUNCE: nacl 1.2 released / Tcl 9.x ready

[Alexander S. <a.s...@gm...>]

NaCl - Networking and Cryptography library (pronounced "salt”)

https://fossil.sowaswie.de/nacl

Version 1.2 is now Tcl 9.x compatible

Description

NaCl (pronounced "salt") is a new easy-to-use high-speed software
library for network communication, encryption, decryption, signatures,
etc. NaCl's goal is to provide all of the core operations needed to
build higher-level cryptographic tools. Of course, other libraries
already exist for these core operations. NaCl advances the state of
the art by improving security, by improving usability, and by
improving speed.

Key features

No data flow from secrets to load addresses. No data flow from secrets to branch conditions. No padding oracles. Centralizing randomness. Avoiding unnecessary randomness. Extremely high speed.

Functions supported

Simple NaCl applications need only six high-level NaCl functions:
crypto_box for public-key authenticated encryption; crypto_box_open
for verification and decryption; crypto_box_keypair to create a public
key in the first place; and similarly for signatures crypto_sign,
crypto_sign_open, and crypto_sign_keypair.

A minimalist implementation of the NaCl API would provide just these
six functions. TweetNaCl is more ambitious, supporting all 25 of the
NaCl functions listed below, which as mentioned earlier are all of the
C NaCl functions used by applications. This list includes all of
NaCl's "default" primitives except for crypto_auth_hmacsha512256,
which was included in NaCl only for compatibility with standards and
is superseded by crypto_onetimeauth.

The Ed25519 signature system has not yet been integrated into NaCl,
since the Ed25519 software has not yet been fully audited; NaCl
currently provides an older signature system. However, NaCl has
announced that it will transition to Ed25519, so TweetNaCl provides
Ed25519.

Public-key cryptography

Authenticated encryption using Curve25519, Salsa20, and Poly1305
crypto_box = crypto_box_curve25519xsalsa20poly1305
Not implemented: crypto_box_beforenm + crypto_box_afternm
crypto_scalarmult = crypto_scalarmult_curve25519
Signatures using Ed25519
crypto_sign = crypto_sign_ed25519
Secret-key cryptography

Authenticated encryption using Salsa20 and Poly1305
crypto_secretbox = crypto_secretbox_xsalsa20poly1305
Encryption using Salsa20
crypto_stream = crypto_stream_xsalsa20
Authentication using HMAC-SHA-512-256
crypto_auth_hmacsha256_ref, crypto_auth_hmacsha512256_ref
One-time authentication using Poly1305
crypto_onetimeauth = crypto_onetimeauth_poly1305
Low-level functions

Hashing using SHA-512 or SHA-256
crypto_hash_sha256_ref, crypto_hash = crypto_hash_sha512