StringCat

The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing a.o. a full-strength general purpose cryptography library.

We are interested in the general purpose cryptographic library. Before we continue we will reproduce an adaped form of the OpenSSL disclaimer.

BEGIN DISCLAIMER
The OpenSSL software package uses strong cryptography, so even if it is created, maintained and distributed from liberal countries in Europe (where it is legal to do this), it falls under certain export/import and/or use restrictions in some other parts of the world.

PLEASE REMEMBER THAT EXPORT/IMPORT AND/OR USE OF STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY SOFTWARE, PROVIDING CRYPTOGRAPHY HOOKS OR EVEN JUST COMMUNICATING TECHNICAL DETAILS ABOUT CRYPTOGRAPHY SOFTWARE IS ILLEGAL IN SOME PARTS OF THE WORLD. SO, WHEN YOU IMPORT THIS PACKAGE TO YOUR COUNTRY, RE-DISTRIBUTE IT FROM THERE OR EVEN JUST EMAIL TECHNICAL SUGGESTIONS OR EVEN SOURCE PATCHES TO THE AUTHOR OR OTHER PEOPLE YOU ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO ANY EXPORT/IMPORT AND/OR USE LAWS WHICH APPLY TO YOU. StringCat IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY VIOLATIONS YOU MAKE HERE. SO BE CAREFUL, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
END DISCLAIMER

On the OpenSSL webpage you will find a similar disclaimer with respect to responsibility of the OpenSSL organization.

Problems for mall businesses and small organizations
Developing cryptographic software can only be done by real experts. And indeed the OpenSSLK library is an excellent software package and indeed used by many large commercial organization, perhaps including your own bank. But to some extent the OpenSSL library supplies only half of the need for companies that will want to use the library, for instance for developing their own safe website. These companies need to emply a bunch of C-programmers to use the library. Such a need immediately rules out the use of the OpenSSL software by small businesses and by not-for-profit organizations. Leave alone usage by individuals.

Solution
However there is a solution: the OpenSSL library includes the source code for a number of small programs that do each a small part of the cryptographic tasks, like digital signing and encryption. Although these utilities are mainly meant to be used for demonstration purposes they can fulfill the need for small organizations. We developing a friendly Windows-interface for these utilities, so that it will become much easier for individuals to use the library. Such a graphical interface – with as name SafePackager –  entails an incredible amount of development work (in our case more than 10 thousand lines of code.  As part of this project the user will need the binary form of the OpenSSL library. For this purpose we have generated the binaries from the source code. We supply these binaries – together with the source code to alleviate the life of the users of SafePackager. Also for those people ho will not use SafePackager the library can still be very useful – if not only for didactic purposes.

Binary distributions of the OpenSSL library
The OpenSSL library is continuously maintained and upgraded. For reasons that we will explain later for the technical people we will supply two versions. Each of the versions inlude all the necessary modules for the utiklities to run. The source code is not necessary, but we supply it anyway in case you want to check how OpenSSL works. We always use distribution 1.

Installable exectubale 1
This will run on older versions of Windows (we have checked down to Windows 95). Compiled with Borland compiler.

Installable executable 2
This will ron only on newer versions. It is the newest version of OpenSSL. Compuiled with free Microsoft C++ compiler The binary includes a redistributed Microsoft component

We will supply both as the can still be used for compiled by the free Borland compiler. l

Technical details two versions (skip if you are not a ICT expert)
We prefer for the use of cryptographic l;ibraries those versions that are backward compatible and do not rely on continuous patching and upgrading. Internet connections are by themselves a security issue when using cryptographic software totally relying on the secreteness of digital keys. So unless OpenSSL discovers a serious security bug in its cryptographic library distribution one is safer as for the distribution two  we have to rely on Microsoft’s unpredictable upgrade policies. Much of the OpenSSL library is concerned with the SSL protoocol of safe internet trffic. For our purpose we will will not use any of these parts and SSL security issues will not be of our concern