| Stable release | Java: 1.46 C#: 1.7 / Java: February 24, 2011 C#: April 7, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Written in | C# and Java |
| Operating system | cross-platform |
| Type | cryptography API |
| License | MIT License[1] |
| Website | http://bouncycastle.org/ |
Bouncy Castle is a collection of APIs used in cryptography. It includes APIs for both the Java and the C# programming languages.
Bouncy Castle is Australian in origin and thus American restrictions on the export of cryptographic software do not apply to it.
Contents |
Bouncy Castle started when two colleagues were tired of having to re-invent a set of cryptography libraries each time they changed jobs working in server-side JavaSE. One of the developers was active in JavaME (J2ME at that time) development as a hobby and a design consideration was to include the greatest range of Java VMs for the library, including those on J2ME.
This design consideration lead to the architecture that exists in Bouncy Castle.
A brief timeline of the development is:
The Bouncy Castle architecture consists of 2 main components that support the base cryptographic capabilities. These are known as the 'light-weight' API, and the JCE provider. There are further components that are built upon the JCE provider which support additional functionality such as PGP support, S-MIME and similar.
The low-level, or 'light-weight', API is a set of APIs that implement all the underlying cryptographic algorithms. The APIs were designed to be simple enough to use if needed, but provided the basic building blocks for the JCE provider. The intent is to use the low-level API in memory constrained devices (JavaME) or when easy access to the JCE libraries is not possible (such as distribution in an applet). As the light-weight API is just Java code, the JVM doesn't impose any restrictions on the operation of the code, and at early times of the Bouncy Castle history it was the only way to develop strong cryptography that wasn't crippled by the Jurisdiction Policy files which prevented any JCE providers from performing "strong" encryption.
The JCE-compatible provider is built upon the low-level APIs. As such, the source code for the JCE provider is an example of how to implement many of the "common" crypto problems using the low-level API. Many projects have been built using the JCE provider, including an Open Source Certificate Authority EJBCA.
Google has packaged an outdated version of Bouncy Castle with their Android operating system. It's not known if this has been modified in any way, but the outdated library has caused a bit of hassle for any developers wanting to ship updated crypto with their Android applications.
To assist with this, an enterprising Android developer has repackaged Bouncy Castle to be usable on the Android platform. This project is known as Spongy Castle and is available from SpongyCastle github project.
Users of Spongy Castle may wish to ensure that the version there is the current version of Bouncy Castle, but with the more infrequent releases (now about every 6-9 months) this should not be overly onerous.