[freehaven-dev] re: crypto API

[Roger R Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

>DATA TYPES :
>                public key data type
>                private key data type
>                symmetric key data type
>
>                These data types may need to be written and read 
>                from disk, and also inserted/retreived from a database.
>
>FUNCTIONS :
>                
>                symmetric_key_encrypt(symmetric key, message)
>                public_key_encrypt(public key, message)
>                sign(private key, message)
>                verify(public key, message)
>
>                public_key_generate
>                symmetric_key_generate 
>
>                ascii_armor
>                ascii_unarmor
>                hash_to_hex

I'm hoping almost all of this is internal to the crypto interface
library that we write. Which doesn't mean that we're not going to
have to write it, but it does mean that whoever writes it (David?)
can write it however he chooses.

From haven's perspective, all of the operations I'm going to do are
going to be on files.

This means I'm going to be doing stuff like

verify_file(filename)
sign_file(filename)
checksum_file(filename)

So yeah, I would vote that we don't use the function headers you've
described above, because if we ever get to the point where we're
throwing the message around in memory, we've done something wrong.

--Roger