The Libgcrypt Reference Manual

The Libgcrypt Library

This manual is for Libgcrypt (version 1.6.0-git5e14de0, 29 June 2011), which is GNU's library of cryptographic building blocks.

Copyright © 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. The text of the license can be found in the section entitled “GNU General Public License”.

• Introduction: What is Libgcrypt.
• Preparation: What you should do before using the library.
• Generalities: General library functions and data types.
• Handler Functions: Working with handler functions.
• Symmetric cryptography: How to use symmetric cryptography.
• Public Key cryptography: How to use public key cryptography.
• Hashing: How to use hash and MAC algorithms.
• Key Derivation: How to derive keys from strings
• Random Numbers: How to work with random numbers.
• S-expressions: How to manage S-expressions.
• MPI library: How to work with multi-precision-integers.
• Prime numbers: How to use the Prime number related functions.
• Utilities: Utility functions.
• Architecture: How Libgcrypt works internally.

Appendices

• Self-Tests: Description of the self-tests.
• FIPS Mode: Description of the FIPS mode.
• Library Copying: The GNU Lesser General Public License says how you can copy and share Libgcrypt.
• Copying: The GNU General Public License says how you can copy and share some parts of Libgcrypt.

Indices

• Figures and Tables: Index of figures and tables.
• Concept Index: Index of concepts and programs.
• Function and Data Index: Index of functions, variables and data types.