Bouncy Castle (cryptography)

Infobox Software
name = Bouncy Castle
logo =


caption =
author =
developer =
released =
latest release version = Java 1.40 and C# 1.4

latest release date = release date|2008|07|13
release date|2008|08|12
latest preview version =
latest preview date =
operating system = cross-platform
platform =
language =
programming language = C# and Java
status =
genre = cryptography API
license = MIT Licensecite web|title=Bouncy Castle - LICENSE|url=http://bouncycastle.org/licence.html]
website = http://bouncycastle.org/

Bouncy castle is a collection of APIs used in cryptography. It includes APIs for both the Java and the C# programming languages.

BouncyCastle is Australian in origin and thus American restrictions on the export of crytographic software do not apply to it.

History

BouncyCastle was started as a result of 2 colleagues being rather tired of having to re-invent a set of cryptography libraries each time they changed jobs. One of the very early design considerations of BouncyCastle came from one of the developers being active in JavaME development, and as a result there are 2 distinct library sets.

Architecture

The low-level, or 'light-weight', API is a vendor-specific set of APIs that implement all the underlying cryptographic algorithms. The intent is to use the low-level API in memory constrained devices (JavaME) or when easy access to the JCE libraries is not possible (such as distribution in a Java applet).

The JCE compatible provider is built upon the low-level API's. As such, the source code for the JCE provider is a great example of how to implement many of the "common" crypto problems using the low-level API.

ee also

* Java Cryptography Architecture

Notes

External links

* [http://mindprod.com/jgloss/bouncycastle.html Java glossary]