* 1.5.6, March 1, 2006
 - The low-level DER/BER coding system was redesigned and rewritten
 - Portions of the certificate code were cleaned up internally
 - Use macros to substantially clean up the GCC assembly code
 - Added 32-bit x86 assembly for Visual C++ (by Luca Piccarreta)
 - Avoid a couple of spurious warnings under Visual C++
 - Some slight cleanups in X509_PublicKey::key_id

* 1.5.5, February 4, 2006
 - Fixed a potential infinite loop in the memory pool code (Matt Johnston)
 - Made Pooling_Allocator::Memory_Block an actual class of sorts
 - Some small optimizations to the division and modulo computations
 - Cleaned up the implementation of some of the BigInt operators
 - Reduced use of dynamic memory allocation in low-level BigInt functions
 - A few simplifications in the Randpool mixing function
 - Removed power(), as it was not particularly useful (or fast)
 - Fixed some annoying bugs in the benchmark code
 - Added a real credits file

* 1.5.4, January 29, 2006
 - Integrated x86 and amd64 assembly code, contributed by Luca Piccarreta
 - Fixed a memory access off-by-one in the Karatsuba code
 - Changed Pooling_Allocator's free list search to a log(N) algorithm
 - Merged ModularReducer with its only subclass, Barrett_Reducer
 - Fixed sign-handling bugs in some of the division and modulo code
 - Renamed the module description files to modinfo.txt
 - Further cleanups in the initialization code
 - Removed BigInt::add and BigInt::sub
 - Merged all the division-related functions into just divide()
 - Modified the <mp_asmi.h> functions to allow for better optimizations
 - Made the number of bits polled from an EntropySource user configurable
 - Avoid including <algorithm> in <botan/secmem.h>
 - Fixed some build problems with Sun Forte
 - Removed some dead code from bigint_modop
 - Fix the definition of same_mem

* 1.5.3, January 24, 2006
 - Many optimizations in the low-level multiple precision integer code
 - Added hooks for assembly implementations of the MPI code
 - Support for the X.509 issuer alternative name extension in new certs
 - Fixed a bug in the decompression modules; found and patched by Matt Johnston
 - New Windows mutex module (mux_win32), by Luca Piccarreta
 - Changed the Windows timer module to use QueryPerformanceCounter
 - mem_pool.cpp was using std::set iterators instead of std::multiset ones
 - Fixed a bug in X509_CA preventing users from disabling particular extensions
 - Fixed the mp_asm64 module, which was entirely broken in 1.5.2
 - Fixed some module build problems on FreeBSD and Tru64

* 1.5.2, January 15, 2006
 - Fixed an off-by-one memory read in MISTY1::key()
 - Fixed a nasty memory leak in Output_Buffers::retire()
 - Reimplemented the memory allocator for scratch
 - Improved memory caching in Montgomery exponentiation
 - Optimizations for multiple precision addition and subtraction
 - Fixed a build problem in the hardware timer module on 64-bit PowerPC
 - Changed default Karatsuba cutoff to 12 words (was 14)
 - Removed MemoryRegion::bits(), which was unused and incorrect
 - Changed maximum HMAC keylength to 1024 bits
 - Various minor Makefile and build system changes
 - Avoid using std::min in <secmem.h> to bypass Windows libc macro pollution
 - Switched checks/clock.cpp back to using clock() by default
 - Enabled the symmetric algorithm tests, which were accidentally off in 1.5.1
 - Removed the Default_Mutex's unused clone() member function

* 1.5.1, January 8, 2006
 - Implemented Montgomery exponentiation
 - Implemented generalized Karatsuba multiplication and squaring
 - Implemented Comba squaring for 4, 6, and 8 word inputs
 - Added new Modular_Exponentiator and Power_Mod classes
 - Removed FixedBase_Exp and FixedExponent_Exp
 - Fixed a performance regression in get_allocator introduced in 1.5.0
 - Engines can now offer S2K algorithms and block cipher padding methods
 - Merged the remaining global 'algolist' code into Default_Engine
 - The low-level MPI code is linked as C again
 - Replaced BigInt's get_nibble with the more general get_substring
 - Some documentation updates

* 1.5.0, January 1, 2006
 - Moved all global/shared library state into a single object
 - Mutex objects are created through mutex factories instead of a global
 - Removed ::get_mutex(), ::initialize_mutex(), and Mutex::clone()
 - Removed the RNG_Quality enum entirely
 - There is now only a single global-use PRNG
 - Removed the no_aliases and no_oids options for LibraryInitializer
 - Removed the deprecated algorithms SEAL, ISAAC, and HAVAL
 - Change es_ftw to use unbuffered I/O