path: root/doc/website/faq.rst

Frequently Asked Questions
========================================

What is this thing?
----------------------------------------

Botan is a library written in C++ which provides a fairly high level
and C++-ish interface to a number of different crypto algorithms. In
addition to the bare algorithms there is also support for number of
standards and de-facto standards like X.509v3 certificates, and
various useful constructs like format-preserving encryption, all or
nothing transforms, and secret splitting.

Who wrote it?
----------------------------------------

It was started as a personal project by `Jack Lloyd
<http://www.randombit.net>`_,who continues to be the maintainer and
release manager. Since the first release in 2001, a number of
individuals and organizations have :doc:`contributed <credits>`.

.. _devel_vs_stable:

Which release should I use?
----------------------------------------

The library is normally released along two different trees, termed
stable and development. The stable tree is a branch off the main line,
and typically only sees bug fixes; almost all new development occurs
in the unstable/development releases. The primary issue is not
stability of the program (bugs of course do occur, and are more likely
to occur in code that is more in flux), but rather stability of API
and ABI. In particular, you should not expect any level of ABI
stability between releases on the development branch, and API changes
may be made without notice. Feel free to send comments on API changes,
or API problems, to the list.

If you don't want to have to worry about tracking a moving target, and
just want something that works, you'll probably prefer using the
stable releases. If you want to get the latest features, the
development releases are the obvious choice.

If you want to ship a binary that is usable out of the box on a Linux
distro that ships botan, you'll probably want to match versions with
that distro; as of this writing most ship with 1.8 though some are
moving to 1.10.

If you're building an application that will embed botan into it
(without relying on a shared library), you want to use an amalgamation
build, which basically turns botan into a single header and a single
source file which you can easily include in your existing application
build. This feature is available in all versions of 1.10 and all later
branches.

Why do I get a SyntaxError when I run configure.py?
----------------------------------------------------

The ``configure.py`` script in 1.10 and later versions requires Python
2.6 or higher. In Python 3 the exception catching syntax changed, and
while 2.6 and 2.7 understand both syntaxes, 2.5 does not. If you see
an error like this::

   File "./configure.py", line 62
     except OSError as e:
                    ^
   SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Then you are using Python 2.5 (or earlier). For Python 2.5, a Perl
one liner can fix the syntax::

   perl -pi -e "s/except (.*) as (.*):/except $1, $2:/g" configure.py

or in Python::

   import re

   lines = re.sub(r"except (.*) as (.*):", r"except \1, \2:",
                  "".join(open("configure.py").readlines()))
   open("configure.py", "w").write(lines)

However Python 2.4 is missing a number of features and cannot be used
to configure the build in 1.10; you'll need to upgrade to at least 2.5
(or preferably 2.7 or 3.1).

The self-test program can't locate the library
-----------------------------------------------

Are you sure either the current working directory ('.') or the
directory botan is building into are in the dynamic library path? On
many Unix systems this is controlled by the ``LD_LIBRARY_PATH``
variable. You can add the currently directory to the list of
directories to search with this Bourne shell command::

  $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:.

If you install the library into a well known location like
``/usr/local/lib``, then probably no particular
``LD_LIBRARY_PATH`` needs to be set.

My program aborts with any message
----------------------------------------

Does your main function wrap all code inside a try/catch block? If an
exception is thrown and is not caught, many C++ runtimes simply crash
the process without providing any sort of diagnostic.

Is the library thread-safe?
----------------------------------------

Yes, botan is thread safe. However, because mutual exclusion depends
on OS specific code, you must load a module to help. POSIX threads and
Win32 critical sections are both supported out of the box, other
thread libraries are very easy to add. To enable thread safe
operation, include "thread_safe" in the string you pass to
``Botan::LibraryInitializer`` constructor. If for whatever reason a
working mutex implementation cannot be found, LibraryInitializer will
throw an exception rather than continue operating in a bad state.

In 1.11.0 and later, the C++11 std thread library is used and the
library always serializes access.

How do I load this key generated by OpenSSL into botan?
--------------------------------------------------------

The encrypted key format used by the ``openssl`` command line tool is
undocumented and apparently specific to OpenSSL. The easiest approach
is to convert it to the (standard) PKCS #8 format, using::

  openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -in my_key.pem

Add ``-nocrypt`` to the command line if you want the resulting PKCS #8
file to be unencrypted, otherwise it will ask you for a new password
to use.

For unencrypted keys, you can also manually decode the parameters
using the existing PEM and BER support; see :botan-devel:`this post
<2010-June/001156>` to the dev list for an example.

Is botan FIPS 140 certified?
----------------------------------------

No version of botan has been certified under FIPS 140. This is
unlikely to happen unless/until an organization is willing to fund and
shepherd the validation process, which typically requires several
months and many thousands of dollars.

Is this thing safe to use?
----------------------------------------

The primary author/maintainer (Jack Lloyd) has 5+ years of experience
reviewing code for security flaws, and has additionally performed
several FIPS 140 validations of hardware and software crypto
implementations. However the library has never undergone an
*impartial* third-party security review, and thus it is entirely
possible/probable that a number of exploitable flaws remain in the
source. (If your company is interested in handling such a review,
please contact the maintainers).

There has been one known security flaw. Between versions 0.7.8
(released Feb 2002) and 1.3.7 (released Dec 2003), the ``es_unix``
module, which runs Unix programs to gather entropy for seeding a
random number generator, ran programs by invoking the ``popen``
library function with commands with no leading directory names. This
means setuid or setgid programs that used this entropy source could be
tricked into executing arbitrary programs via manipulation of the PATH
variable. Later versions will only search through specific (presumed
safe) directories like ``/usr/bin``; the list of directories to search
can be controlled by the application.

Is botan vulnerable to timing attacks?
----------------------------------------

Botan's public key implementations do make some attempt to defend
against timing attacks; random blinding is used to protect all RSA,
Rabin-Williams, ElGamal, and Diffie-Hellman private key operations.

Public key algorithms implemented using the Chinese Remainder Theorem
(RSA and Rabin-Williams) are subject to a catastrophic failure: if a
computational error (either induced by an attacker or merely
accidental) occurs during the private key operation, the private key
can be revealed. Other, more subtle, fault attacks are possible against
other schemes.  For this reason, private key operations are checked
for consistency with the public key - if the results are not
consistent, then an exception is thrown indicating an error has
occurred rather than release information that might compromise the
key.

AES implementations are usually quite vulnerable to timing attacks.
The table based implementation of AES included in botan uses small
tables in the first and last rounds which makes such attacks somewhat
more difficult. Alternate implementations of AES using SSSE3 and
AES-NI instruction sets are also included, and run in constant time,
but of course require a processor that supports these instruction
sets.

I think I've found a security flaw. What should I do?
------------------------------------------------------------

You can do any combination of:

* Contact the current lead maintainer personally; currently
  `Jack Lloyd <http://www.randombit.net>`_
  (`personal PGP key <http://www.randombit.net/keys/pgpkey.html>`_)

* Email the `development list
  <http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/botan-devel>`_

* File a bug in `Bugzilla <http://bugs.randombit.net/>`_

Does botan support SSL/TLS, SSH, S/MIME, OpenPGP...
------------------------------------------------------------

The latest development (1.11) releases support TLS up to TLS v1.2.
The 1.10 releases support up to TLS v1.1 using a different design
and API; new applications intending to use TLS should use 1.11.

`NetSieben SSH <http://netsieben.com/products/ssh/>`_ is an open
source SSHv2 client implementation that uses botan.

There is currently no support for OpenPGP, CMS, OTR, or SSHv2 servers.

Will it work on my platform XYZ??
----------------------------------------

The most common stumbling block is a compiler that is buggy or can't
handle modern C++ (specifically, C++98). Most any recent release of
GCC, Clang, Intel C++, Visual C++, etc are all fine. It is tested most
heavily on Linux but especially the stable versions are built and
tested across a range of Unices as well as OS X and Windows.

Versions 1.11.0 and higher require a C++11 compiler as well as Boost
filesystem (plus optional use of Boost asio). GCC 4.7.0 and Clang 3.1
or higher should work. Visual C++ 2013 seems to support all the
required features, but probably needs a bit of work, as Windows has
not seen much attention.

I'm not feeling this, what can I use instead?
------------------------------------------------------------

* `NaCl <http://nacl.cr.yp.to/>`_ (and portable derivatives such as
  `libsodium <https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium>`_) provide a
  small selection of algorithms for ECC key exchange (Curve25519) and
  message encryption and authentication (XSalsa20+Poly1305) carefully
  implemented for performance and side channel security. It is an
  excellent choice if you do not need compatability with any other
  software.

* `OpenSSL <http://www.openssl.org>`_ is written in C and mostly
  targeted to being an SSL/TLS implementation but there is a lot of
  other stuff in there as well. BSD plus wonky advertising clause.

* `Crypto++ <http://www.cryptopp.com/>`_ is a C++ crypto library which
  is roughly feature comparable to botan but with a very different
  approach to the API. Boost license.