I've just uploaded version 1.0.0 of the Python Cryptography Toolkit, a collection of cryptographic routines for the Python programming language. It's at ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/pct/pycrypt100.tgz. All my code is public domain; some of the algorithm implementations are GPLed. The Toolkit now contains various cryptographic algorithms such as DES, IDEA, MD5, etc. I will fix bugs in the software, and may add or remove the odd module if some startling new research result comes out, but things should be pretty stable from now on. The algorithms available are: Hash functions: Haval, MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA. Private-key encryption: Blowfish, DES, DES3 (Triple DES), Diamond, IDEA, Alleged RC4, 32-bit RC5, REDOC III. Public-key: Digital Signature Standard, ElGamal, RSA. (There's a non-functional ESIGN module included, too; I'll finish it for a subsequent release.) Python is an interpreted scripting language; see http://www.python.org for more information, the source code, and binaries. It includes arbitrary-sized integers, so the public-key algorithms are implemented in pure Python; this entails a speed penalty, but makes the code more valuable for educational purposes. A sample usage of a hash algorithm (MD5) is:

...

...

import md5 hash=md5.new() hash.update(message) hash.digest() '\235\361\034\357\217MX\2246\226\367\366Ebx\326'

A sample use of an encryption algorithm (IDEA, in this case) is:

...

...

import idea obj=idea.new('This is a key456', idea.ECB) message="The answer is no" ciphertext=obj.encrypt(message) ciphertext '\2325$\343=)d\341^\025<\344\013\204 T' obj.decrypt(ciphertext) 'The answer is no'

Questions, comments, or suggestions are welcomed at the address below. Andrew Kuchling andrewk@cst.ca