15. Cryptographic Services

The modules described in this chapter implement various algorithms of a cryptographic nature. They are available at the discretion of the installation. Here's an overview:

hmac   Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication (HMAC) implementation for Python.
md5   RSA's MD5 message digest algorithm.
sha   NIST's secure hash algorithm, SHA.
mpz   Interface to the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
rotor   Enigma-like encryption and decryption.

Hardcore cypherpunks will probably find the cryptographic modules written by A.M. Kuchling of further interest; the package adds built-in modules for DES and IDEA encryption, provides a Python module for reading and decrypting PGP files, and then some. These modules are not distributed with Python but available separately. See the URL http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto.html for more information.  

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