CHANGES

 OpenSSL CHANGES
 _______________

 Changes between 0.9.7e and 0.9.8  [xx XXX xxxx]

  *) RC4 performance overhaul on modern architectures/implementations, such
     as Intel P4, IA-64 and AMD64.
     [Andy Polyakov]

  *) New utility extract-section.pl. This can be used specify an alternative
     section number in a pod file instead of having to treat each file as
     a separate case in Makefile. This can be done by adding two lines to the
     pod file:

     =for comment openssl_section:XXX

     The blank line is mandatory.

     [Steve Henson]

  *) New arguments -certform, -keyform and -pass for s_client and s_server
     to allow alternative format key and certificate files and passphrase
     sources.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) New structure X509_VERIFY_PARAM which combines current verify parameters,
     update associated structures and add various utility functions.

     Add new policy related verify parameters, include policy checking in 
     standard verify code. Enhance 'smime' application with extra parameters
     to support policy checking and print out.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) Add a new engine to support VIA PadLock ACE extensions in the VIA C3
     Nehemiah processors. These extensions support AES encryption in hardware
     as well as RNG (though RNG support is currently disabled).
     [Michal Ludvig <michal@logix.cz>, with help from Andy Polyakov]

  *) Deprecate BN_[get|set]_params() functions (they were ignored internally).
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) New FIPS 180-2 algorithms, SHA-224/-256/-384/-512 are implemented.
     [Andy Polyakov and a number of other people]

  *) Improved PowerPC platform support. Most notably BIGNUM assembler
     implementation contributed by IBM.
     [Suresh Chari, Peter Waltenberg, Andy Polyakov]

  *) The new 'RSA_generate_key_ex' function now takes a BIGNUM for the public
     exponent rather than 'unsigned long'. There is a corresponding change to
     the new 'rsa_keygen' element of the RSA_METHOD structure.
     [Jelte Jansen, Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Functionality for creating the initial serial number file is now
     moved from CA.pl to the 'ca' utility with a new option -create_serial.

     (Before OpenSSL 0.9.7e, CA.pl used to initialize the serial
     number file to 1, which is bound to cause problems.  To avoid
     the problems while respecting compatibility between different 0.9.7
     patchlevels, 0.9.7e  employed 'openssl x509 -next_serial' in
     CA.pl for serial number initialization.  With the new release 0.9.8,
     we can fix the problem directly in the 'ca' utility.)
     [Steve Henson]

  *) Reduced header interdepencies by declaring more opaque objects in
     ossl_typ.h. As a consequence, including some headers (eg. engine.h) will
     give fewer recursive includes, which could break lazy source code - so
     this change is covered by the OPENSSL_NO_DEPRECATED symbol. As always,
     developers should define this symbol when building and using openssl to
     ensure they track the recommended behaviour, interfaces, [etc], but
     backwards-compatible behaviour prevails when this isn't defined.
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) New function X509_POLICY_NODE_print() which prints out policy nodes.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) Add new EVP function EVP_CIPHER_CTX_rand_key and associated functionality.
     This will generate a random key of the appropriate length based on the 
     cipher context. The EVP_CIPHER can provide its own random key generation
     routine to support keys of a specific form. This is used in the des and 
     3des routines to generate a key of the correct parity. Update S/MIME
     code to use new functions and hence generate correct parity DES keys.
     Add EVP_CHECK_DES_KEY #define to return an error if the key is not 
     valid (weak or incorrect parity).
     [Steve Henson]

  *) Add a local set of CRLs that can be used by X509_verify_cert() as well
     as looking them up. This is useful when the verified structure may contain
     CRLs, for example PKCS#7 signedData. Modify PKCS7_verify() to use any CRLs
     present unless the new PKCS7_NO_CRL flag is asserted.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) Extend ASN1 oid configuration module. It now additionally accepts the
     syntax:

     shortName = some long name, 1.2.3.4
     [Steve Henson]

  *) Reimplemented the BN_CTX implementation. There is now no more static
     limitation on the number of variables it can handle nor the depth of the
     "stack" handling for BN_CTX_start()/BN_CTX_end() pairs. The stack
     information can now expand as required, and rather than having a single
     static array of bignums, BN_CTX now uses a linked-list of such arrays
     allowing it to expand on demand whilst maintaining the usefulness of
     BN_CTX's "bundling".
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Add a missing BN_CTX parameter to the 'rsa_mod_exp' callback in RSA_METHOD
     to allow all RSA operations to function using a single BN_CTX.
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Preliminary support for certificate policy evaluation and checking. This
     is initially intended to pass the tests outlined in "Conformance Testing
     of Relying Party Client Certificate Path Processing Logic" v1.07.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) bn_dup_expand() has been deprecated, it was introduced in 0.9.7 and
     remained unused and not that useful. A variety of other little bignum
     tweaks and fixes have also been made continuing on from the audit (see
     below).
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Constify all or almost all d2i, c2i, s2i and r2i functions, along with
     associated ASN1, EVP and SSL functions and old ASN1 macros.
     [Richard Levitte]

  *) BN_zero() only needs to set 'top' and 'neg' to zero for correct results,
     and this should never fail. So the return value from the use of
     BN_set_word() (which can fail due to needless expansion) is now deprecated;
     if OPENSSL_NO_DEPRECATED is defined, BN_zero() is a void macro.
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) BN_CTX_get() should return zero-valued bignums, providing the same
     initialised value as BN_new().
     [Geoff Thorpe, suggested by Ulf Möller]

  *) Support for inhibitAnyPolicy certificate extension.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) An audit of the BIGNUM code is underway, for which debugging code is
     enabled when BN_DEBUG is defined. This makes stricter enforcements on what
     is considered valid when processing BIGNUMs, and causes execution to
     assert() when a problem is discovered. If BN_DEBUG_RAND is defined,
     further steps are taken to deliberately pollute unused data in BIGNUM
     structures to try and expose faulty code further on. For now, openssl will
     (in its default mode of operation) continue to tolerate the inconsistent
     forms that it has tolerated in the past, but authors and packagers should
     consider trying openssl and their own applications when compiled with
     these debugging symbols defined. It will help highlight potential bugs in
     their own code, and will improve the test coverage for OpenSSL itself. At
     some point, these tighter rules will become openssl's default to improve
     maintainability, though the assert()s and other overheads will remain only
     in debugging configurations. See bn.h for more details.
     [Geoff Thorpe, Nils Larsch, Ulf Möller]

  *) BN_CTX_init() has been deprecated, as BN_CTX is an opaque structure
     that can only be obtained through BN_CTX_new() (which implicitly
     initialises it). The presence of this function only made it possible
     to overwrite an existing structure (and cause memory leaks).
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Because of the callback-based approach for implementing LHASH as a
     template type, lh_insert() adds opaque objects to hash-tables and
     lh_doall() or lh_doall_arg() are typically used with a destructor callback
     to clean up those corresponding objects before destroying the hash table
     (and losing the object pointers). So some over-zealous constifications in
     LHASH have been relaxed so that lh_insert() does not take (nor store) the
     objects as "const" and the lh_doall[_arg] callback wrappers are not
     prototyped to have "const" restrictions on the object pointers they are
     given (and so aren't required to cast them away any more).
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) The tmdiff.h API was so ugly and minimal that our own timing utility
     (speed) prefers to use its own implementation. The two implementations
     haven't been consolidated as yet (volunteers?) but the tmdiff API has had
     its object type properly exposed (MS_TM) instead of casting to/from "char
     *". This may still change yet if someone realises MS_TM and "ms_time_***"
     aren't necessarily the greatest nomenclatures - but this is what was used
     internally to the implementation so I've used that for now.
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Ensure that deprecated functions do not get compiled when
     OPENSSL_NO_DEPRECATED is defined. Some "openssl" subcommands and a few of
     the self-tests were still using deprecated key-generation functions so
     these have been updated also.
     [Geoff Thorpe]

  *) Reorganise PKCS#7 code to separate the digest location functionality
     into PKCS7_find_digest(), digest addtion into PKCS7_bio_add_digest().
     New function PKCS7_set_digest() to set the digest type for PKCS#7
     digestedData type. Add additional code to correctly generate the
     digestedData type and add support for this type in PKCS7 initialization
     functions.
     [Steve Henson]

  *) New function PKCS7_set0_type_other() this initializes a PKCS7 
     structure of type "other".
     [Steve Henson]