openssl/STATUS

  OpenSSL STATUS                           Last modified at
  ______________                           $Date: 2002/11/21 22:39:16 $

  DEVELOPMENT STATE

    o  OpenSSL 0.9.7:  Under development...
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6g: Released on August     9th, 2002
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6f: Released on August     8th, 2002
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6e: Released on July      30th, 2002
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6d: Released on May        9th, 2002
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6c: Released on December  21st, 2001
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6b: Released on July       9th, 2001
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6a: Released on April      5th, 2001
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.6:  Released on September 24th, 2000
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.5a: Released on April      1st, 2000
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.5:  Released on February  28th, 2000
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.4:  Released on August    09th, 1999
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.3a: Released on May       29th, 1999
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.3:  Released on May       25th, 1999
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.2b: Released on March     22th, 1999
    o  OpenSSL 0.9.1c: Released on December  23th, 1998

  RELEASE SHOWSTOPPERS

    o [2002-11-21]
      PR 343 mentions that scrubbing memory with 'memset(ptr, 0, n)' may
      be optimized away in modern compilers.  This is definitely not good
      and needs to be fixed immediately.  The formula to use is presented
      in:

      http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/82/297918/2002-10-27/2002-11-02/0

      The problem report that mentions this is:

      https://www.aet.TU-Cottbus.DE/rt2/Ticket/Display.html?id=343

  AVAILABLE PATCHES

    o 

  IN PROGRESS

    o Steve is currently working on (in no particular order):
        ASN1 code redesign, butchery, replacement.
        OCSP
        EVP cipher enhancement.
        Enhanced certificate chain verification.
	Private key, certificate and CRL API and implementation.
	Developing and bugfixing PKCS#7 (S/MIME code).
        Various X509 issues: character sets, certificate request extensions.
    o Geoff and Richard are currently working on:
	ENGINE (the new code that gives hardware support among others).
    o Richard is currently working on:
	UI (User Interface)
	UTIL (a new set of library functions to support some higher level
	      functionality that is currently missing).
	Shared library support for VMS.
	Kerberos 5 authentication
	Constification
	OCSP

  NEEDS PATCH

    o  apps/ca.c: "Sign the certificate?" - "n" creates empty certificate file

    o  Whenever strncpy is used, make sure the resulting string is NULL-terminated
       or an error is reported

    o  "OpenSSL STATUS" is never up-to-date.

  OPEN ISSUES

    o  The Makefile hierarchy and build mechanism is still not a round thing:

       1. The config vs. Configure scripts
          It's the same nasty situation as for Apache with APACI vs.
          src/Configure. It confuses.
          Suggestion: Merge Configure and config into a single configure
                      script with a Autoconf style interface ;-) and remove
                      Configure and config. Or even let us use GNU Autoconf
                      itself. Then we can avoid a lot of those platform checks
                      which are currently in Configure.

    o  Support for Shared Libraries has to be added at least
       for the major Unix platforms. The details we can rip from the stuff
       Ralf has done for the Apache src/Configure script. Ben wants the
       solution to be really simple.

       Status: Ralf will look how we can easily incorporate the
               compiler PIC and linker DSO flags from Apache
               into the OpenSSL Configure script.

               Ulf: +1 for using GNU autoconf and libtool (but not automake,
                    which apparently is not flexible enough to generate
                    libcrypto)


    o  The perl/ stuff needs a major overhaul. Currently it's
       totally obsolete. Either we clean it up and enhance it to be up-to-date
       with the C code or we also could replace it with the really nice
       Net::SSLeay package we can find under
       http://www.neuronio.pt/SSLeay.pm.html.  Ralf uses this package for a
       longer time and it works fine and is a nice Perl module. Best would be
       to convince the author to work for the OpenSSL project and create a
       Net::OpenSSL or Crypt::OpenSSL package out of it and maintains it for
       us.

       Status: Ralf thinks we should both contact the author of Net::SSLeay
               and look how much effort it is to bring Eric's perl/ stuff up
               to date.
               Paul +1

  WISHES

    o  SRP in TLS.
       [wished by:
        Dj <derek@yo.net>, Tom Wu <tom@arcot.com>,
        Tom Holroyd <tomh@po.crl.go.jp>]

       See http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-tls-srp-00.txt
       as well as http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~tjw/srp/.

       Tom Holroyd tells us there is a SRP patch for OpenSSH at
       http://members.tripod.com/professor_tom/archives/, that could
       be useful.