Re: libnettle/libhogweed WIP

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 17 May 2017 16:05:01 -0400 Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> wrote: 

I've pushed the last commits I wanted to introduce to the
scratch/tzz/nettle branch: generate IVs using GNUTLS_RND_NONCE. The
input spec and the output of the functions is changed slightly. The docs
and tests are updated.

The output is now (OUTPUT ACTUAL-IV) which lets callers grab the IV that
was used. This detail will be hidden by wrapper libraries but maybe a
plist or alist would be better than a simple list? I'm not sure.

I had an alternate IV generator working following
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5116#section-3.2 generating a fixed hash
with the key and appending a counter, but was not happy with the
performance using hashtables. Also hashtables don't seem to work well
with binary keys and the C mechanics got really annoying. The main
requirement is that an IV is never reused with the same key, which
I think GNUTLS_RND_NONCE satisfies pretty well. Comments welcome.

I'd love to merge this branch, if there are no objections or comments on
the two items above or otherwise. It's been sitting for a while.

Thanks
Ted