Re: CIPHER

Steve, I have talked with several people to answer your questions. See
responses --.

Very informative Beth, Thank You.

So basically CIPHER works by receiving a ptr to bytes, the lgth of the
bytes, the key, the type of encryption and the direction.  And it returns
an encrypted/decrypted version of the bytes?
Same key in either direction.

     -- Correct.

Too bad about the PKA restrictions.

     -- These restrictions only apply to our BSAFE toolkit.

Are there any other algorithms in the works to compete with RSA?

     -- You mean on iSeries?  Diffie Helman and DSA are implemented in
BSAFE and JCE.  Again, we cannot expose our BSAFE to customer apps.
However, you can obtain the BSAFE toolkit from RSA Security Inc.

>4758 crypto card with a set of APIs available in the OS/400.  3) RSA is
>implemented within JCE.

Does the crypto card do any processing, or does it just make sure you are
not running the PKA api's without paying for them?

     -- RSA processing is done on the card and there are no restrictions on
those APIs because the RSA is a different implementation.  You purchase the
card; the APIs come with OS/400.

So to implement PKA, you have to pay RSA thru IBM on the iseries,

     -- No, anyone can implement the RSA algorithm.  Our license agreement
for BSAFE prohibits us from exposing APIs. We are considering an
alternative solution.

then what on the other end? say a windows pc? Does windows have it built it
or its there a similar arangement with RSA to use PKA on the pc?

     -- The BSAFE toolkit is available for several platforms.  You can
visit http://www.rsa.com/ for more information.   There are other
implementations available as well.  I believe that RSA is available through
the MSCAPI interfaces in Windows.   You can also download the openSSL
toolkit.  It supports a lot of algorithms including RSA.  Look at
http://www.openssl.org for more information.

If the public key code is free, does the iseries come with no charge public
key encrypt/decrypt support?

     -- MI CIPHER does not support PKA. RSA is available via the 4758
crypto card, which must be purchased.  The RSA implementation in JCE comes
as part of OS/400.

and last ?, What is JCE?

     -- JCE is Java Crypto Extensions 1.2.1.

It is PKA that I am most interested in Beth, so I dont need any CIPHER code
samples.

Many thanks,

Steve Richter


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