Danger

Nothing here should be used for any security purposes.

  • If you need cryptographic tools in a Python environment use pyca.

  • If you need efficient and reliable abstract math utilities in a Python-like environment consider using SageMath.

Motiviation#

This package is almost certainly not the package you are looking for. Instead, pyca or SageMath will better suite your needs. I created it to meet a number of my own idiosyncratic needs.

  • I don’t have the flexibility of Python version that I may want when using SageMath.

    For example, I want to have access to something that behaves a bit like SageMath’s factor() or the ability to play with elliptic curves without having do everything in Sage. Perhaps when sagemath-standard quickly becomes available for the latest Python versions, I won’t need to have my own (failable and incomplete) pure Python substitutes for some things I need.

  • I sometimes talk about these algorithms for teaching purposes. Having pure Python versions allows me to present these.

    Proper cryptographic packages, like pyca,

    • Correctly obscure the lower level primitives I may wish to exhibit;

    • Correctly prevent use of unsafe parameters such as small keys;

    • Correctly involve a lot of abstractions in the calls to the concealed primitives.

    Those features, essential for something to be used, are not great for expository discussion.

  • Some of these I created or copied for my own learning purposes.

  • I have a number of “good enough” (for my purposes) implementations of things that I want to reuse.

    For example, Birthday collision calculations are things I occasionally want, and I don’t want to hunt for wherever I have something like that written or rewrite it yet again. Likewise, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m written the extended GCD algorithm more than a dozen times (not all in Python), and so would like to have at least the Python version in one place

  • I want to use cryptographic examples in Jupyter Notebooks.

    I also want them to be reproducible, which is why I am making this public.

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