Hello all, I am involved in a project which aims at the creation of a free and portable Java(tm) based object operating system. A basic functional requirement for this new OS is to provide /fast and effective/ strong cryptographic support at the OS level. The basic structure of the system is a layered architecture, with the lowest layer consisting of a platform specific (non-portable) kernel supporting an embedded JVM (again in C/ASM) and a set of Java(tm) interfaces to this 'virtual platform'. The OS proper will sit on top of this and will be 100% Java (tm). The issue: As you may know, SMI has and will deliver a set of 'security' packages as a standard component of JDK. This uses RSA technology. Basic and general 'interfaces' to encapsulate constructs such as Key, Provider, Cypher, etc. are also defined. A few people in the project group feel that many different groups and entities out there will provide (portable) Public Key encryption packages (implemented in Java(tm)) that can be used by the users of the OS. They argue against embedding computational support at the Kernel (non-portable) layer as wasted effort. Others (& myself included) feel that 'effective' also means efficiency of execution. Specially so if such functionality is to be used to encypher 'streams' and such (if that is possible). Your expert advice: a) How do you feel about 'where' the computational support should be implemented ? b) Assuming answer to (a) to be "At the kernel level and in C/ASM", is it possible to achieve a fine-grain modularity in terms of fairly generic algorithms and computations which can then be combined in conjunction to support a variety of encryption strategies ? c) Is there any benefit to implementing the random number generation system in the Kernel? Your input is greatly appreciated. If you feel there are other considerations to be made, please let me know. Thank you. Joubin p.s. Java(tm) and related items are the tightly guarded property of Sun Microsystems Inc. __________________________________ member, alpha zero LLC joubin@inch.com NoVA __________________________________