[Cryptography Team] Team Update

[Matthew S. Hamrick]

Hey...

Are we working on a general purpose ASN.1 compiler / BER codec or  
just enough ASN.1 to parse certs and PKCS blobs?

I might recommend we design an interface for the former but simply  
implement the latter. BER / DER encoding can be a little ugly at  
times. I've written several "highly-focused" BER / DER decoders in  
Java, and can tell you that scope creep is NOT your friend. ("Highly  
focused" in this context means specific to the ASN.1 for a particular  
application.)

I think someone mentioned Dubuisson's book on ASN.1, the PDF of which  
is available for free download. While I believe that Dubuisson's book  
is an excellent read, there's more to ASN.1 than BER/DER encoding,  
and you might wind up wasting a little bit of time by trying to  
implement _everything_. You might want to check out Burt Kaliski's  
"Layman's guide to a subset of ASN.1, BER, and DER". Available in  
text format at ftp://ftp.rsa.com/pub/pkcs/ascii/layman.asc .

-Cheers!
-Matt H.

On Nov 15, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Ron Teitelbaum wrote:

> Also once the relationship is settled we will again approach Cincom  
> about a port of their cryptography code.  (Sean have you heard any  
> new comments from James?)  In the mean time I am still working  
> through ASN.1.
>
>
>
> We have a new official Team Member: Paul Davidowitz.  Paul and I  
> have worked before he is a very solid programmer.  We have  
> discussed ASN.1 and Paul is working through some possible designs.   
> Please welcome Paul to the team!
>
>

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