I understand that Sun is considering including a bignum package and possibly other crypto support in native form in a future release of Java. There has been considerable discussion of this on the coderpunks list. Apparently Sun has said they will release their crypto API within the next week or so. However these kinds of things are often delayed, in my experience. An earlier version of the crypto API was shared with Java developers at a meeting a few months ago, and the response was quite negative, according to list memebers. The class and method design in many cases seemed awkward, spotty, and inconsistent. Apparently there are also export considerations, with the NSA resisting the inclusion of too many explicitly crypto oriented classes. Hal