/** \mainpage Qt Cryptographic Architecture Taking a hint from the similarly-named Java Cryptography Architecture, %QCA aims to provide a straightforward and cross-platform cryptographic API, using Qt datatypes and conventions. %QCA separates the API from the implementation, using plugins known as Providers. The advantage of this model is to allow applications to avoid linking to or explicitly depending on any particular cryptographic library. This allows one to easily change or upgrade Provider implementations without even needing to recompile the application! %QCA should work everywhere %Qt does, including Windows/Unix/MacOSX. This version of %QCA is for Qt4 or Qt5, and requires no Qt3 compatibility code. \section features Features This library provides an easy API for the following features: - Secure byte arrays (QCA::SecureArray) - Arbitrary precision integers (QCA::BigInteger) - Random number generation (QCA::Random) - SSL/TLS (QCA::TLS) - X509 certificates (QCA::Certificate and QCA::CertificateCollection) - X509 certificate revocation lists (QCA::CRL) - Built-in support for operating system certificate root storage (QCA::systemStore) - Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) (QCA::SASL) - Cryptographic Message Syntax (e.g., for S/MIME) (QCA::CMS) - PGP messages (QCA::OpenPGP) - Unified PGP/CMS API (QCA::SecureMessage) - Subsystem for managing Smart Cards and PGP keyrings (QCA::KeyStore) - Simple but flexible logging system (QCA::Logger) - RSA (QCA::RSAPrivateKey and QCA::RSAPublicKey) - DSA (QCA::DSAPrivateKey and QCA::DSAPublicKey) - Diffie-Hellman (QCA::DHPrivateKey and QCA::DHPublicKey) - Hashing (QCA::Hash) with - SHA-0 - SHA-1 - MD2 - MD4 - MD5 - RIPEMD160 - SHA-224 - SHA-256 - SHA-384 - SHA-512 - Whirlpool - Ciphers (QCA::Cipher) using - BlowFish - Triple DES - DES - AES (128, 192 and 256 bit) - CAST5 (also known as CAST-128) - Message Authentication Code (QCA::MessageAuthenticationCode), using - HMAC with SHA-1 - HMAC with MD5 - HMAC with RIPEMD160 - HMAC with SHA-224 - HMAC with SHA-256 - HMAC with SHA-384 - HMAC with SHA-512 - Encoding and decoding of hexadecimal (QCA::Hex) and Base64 (QCA::Base64) strings. Functionality is supplied via plugins. This is useful for avoiding dependence on a particular crypto library and makes upgrading easier, as there is no need to recompile your application when adding or upgrading a crypto plugin. Also, by pushing crypto functionality into plugins, your application is free of legal issues, such as export regulation. And of course, you get a very simple crypto API for Qt, where you can do things like: \code QString hash = QCA::Hash("sha1").hashToString(blockOfData); \endcode \section using Using QCA The application simply includes <QtCrypto> and links to libqca, which provides the 'wrapper API' and plugin loader. Crypto functionality is determined during runtime, and plugins are loaded from the 'crypto' subfolder of the %Qt library paths. There are additional examples available. \subsection tute1 Introduction Using %QCA is much like using Qt, and if you are familiar with Qt, then it should feel "natural". There are a few things you do need to know though, to build reliable applications: - %QCA needs to be initialized before you use any class that requires plugin support, or uses secure memory. That is most of %QCA, so you should assume that you need to perform initialization. The easiest way to do this is to instantiate a QCA::Initializer object and ensure it is not deleted (or allowed to go out of scope) until you have finished using %QCA. - Most features/algorithms are provided by plugins/\ref providers. You should check that the required feature is actually available (using QCA::isSupported()) before trying to create it. If you try to create a class and suitable provider support is not available, you will get back a null object, and when you try to use one of the methods, your application will segfault. Also, for features that take algorithm names (e.g. QCA::Hash, which takes the name of the hashing algorithm such as "md5" or "sha256"), the name is looked up at run-time, so if you make a typographical error (e.g. "md56") it will compile correctly, but segfault at run-time. \subsection tute2 Thoughts on security %QCA tries to be flexible in what it supports. That does not mean that every possible combination of features makes sense though. We strongly recommend against coming up with your own design made up of low-level cryptographic primitives (e.g. QCA::Hash, QCA::Cipher and similar features) and trying to use higher level capabilities. In particular, we recommend looking at QCA::TLS, QCA::SASL, QCA::CMS and QCA::OpenPGP as starting points. When selecting a particular cryptographic feature, you should make sure that you understand what sort of threats your application is likely to be exposed to, and how that threat can be effectively countered. In addition, you should consider whether you can avoid adding cryptographic features directly to your application (e.g. for secure transport, you may be able to tunnel your application over SSH). Also, you may need to look beyond %QCA for some security needs (e.g. for authentication, your situation may be more suited to using Kerberos than SASL or TLS). \subsection intro-design Design The architecture of %QCA is shown below: \image html qca-arch.png "QCA Architecture" \image latex qca-arch.eps "QCA Architecture" width=\textwidth Application authors normally only need to use the User API. The provider API is available for plugin authors, but can also be used by application authors to provide very specific capabilities. For more information on the design of %QCA, you might like to review the \ref architecture description. \section availability Availability \subsection qca2code Releases The latest release packages can be found in the %QCA 2.x download area. See the project web site for further information about %QCA releases. \subsection qca2dev Current development The latest version of the code is available from the KDE Git server (there is no formal release of the current version at this time). Naturally you will need %Qt properly set up and configured in order to build and use %QCA. The Git code can be browsed via the web Use \verbatim git clone https://invent.kde.org/libraries/qca.git \endverbatim to get the latest sources. */ /** \page architecture Architecture \note You don't need to understand any of this to use %QCA - it is documented for those who are curious, and for anyone planning to extend or modify %QCA. The design of %QCA is based on the Bridge design pattern. The intent of the Bridge pattern is to "Decouple an abstraction from its implementation so that the two can vary independently." [Gamma et.al, pg 151]. To understand how this decoupling works in the case of %QCA, is is easiest to look at an example - a cryptographic Hash. The API is pretty simple (although I've left out some parts that aren't required for this example): \code class QCA_EXPORT Hash : public Algorithm, public BufferedComputation { public: Hash(const QString &type, const QString &provider); virtual void clear(); virtual void update(const QCA::SecureArray &a); virtual QCA::SecureArray final(); } \endcode The implementation for the Hash class is almost as simple: \code Hash::Hash(const QString &type, const QString &provider) :Algorithm(type, provider) { } void Hash::clear() { static_cast(context())->clear(); } void Hash::update(const QCA::SecureArray &a) { static_cast(context())->update(a); } QCA::SecureArray Hash::final() { return static_cast(context())->final(); } \endcode The reason why it looks so simple is that the various methods in Hash just call out to equivalent routines in the context() object. The context comes from a call (getContext()) that is made as part of the Algorithm constructor. That getContext() call causes %QCA to work through the list of providers (generally plugins) that it knows about, looking for a provider that can produce the right kind of context (in this case, a HashContext). The code for a HashContext doesn't need to be linked into %QCA - it can be varied in its implementation, including being changed at run-time. The application doesn't need to know how HashContext is implemented, because it just has to deal with the Hash class interface. In fact, HashContext may not be implemented, so the application should check (using QCA::isSupported()) before trying to use features that are implemented with plugins. The code for one implementation (in this case, calling OpenSSL) is shown below. \code class opensslHashContext : public HashContext { public: opensslHashContext(const EVP_MD *algorithm, Provider *p, const QString &type) : HashContext(p, type) { m_algorithm = algorithm; EVP_DigestInit( &m_context, m_algorithm ); }; ~opensslHashContext() { EVP_MD_CTX_cleanup(&m_context); } void clear() { EVP_MD_CTX_cleanup(&m_context); EVP_DigestInit( &m_context, m_algorithm ); } void update(const QCA::SecureArray &a) { EVP_DigestUpdate( &m_context, (unsigned char*)a.data(), a.size() ); } QCA::SecureArray final() { QCA::SecureArray a( EVP_MD_size( m_algorithm ) ); EVP_DigestFinal( &m_context, (unsigned char*)a.data(), 0 ); return a; } Provider::Context *clone() const { return new opensslHashContext(*this); } protected: const EVP_MD *m_algorithm; EVP_MD_CTX m_context; }; \endcode This approach (using an Adapter pattern) is very common in %QCA backends, because the plugins are often based on existing libraries. In addition to the various Context objects, each provider also has a parameterised Factory class that has a createContext() method, as shown below: \code Context *createContext(const QString &type) { //OpenSSL_add_all_digests(); if ( type == "sha1" ) return new opensslHashContext( EVP_sha1(), this, type); else if ( type == "sha0" ) return new opensslHashContext( EVP_sha(), this, type); else if ( type == "md5" ) return new opensslHashContext( EVP_md5(), this, type); else if ( type == "aes128-cfb" ) return new opensslCipherContext( EVP_aes_128_cfb(), 0, this, type); else if ( type == "aes128-cbc" ) return new opensslCipherContext( EVP_aes_128_cbc(), 0, this, type); else return 0; } \endcode The resulting effect is that %QCA can ask the provider to provide an appropriate Context object without worrying about how it is implemented. For features that are implemented with variable algorithms (for example, HashContext can support a wide range of algorithms - MD5, SHA0, and SHA1 in the example above; and CipherContext and MACContext can also do this), we need to be able to let applications determine which algorithms are supported. This is handled through the InfoContext class. A typical example is shown below: \code class opensslInfoContext : public InfoContext { Q_OBJECT public: opensslInfoContext(Provider *p) : InfoContext(p) { } Context *clone() const { return new opensslInfoContext(*this); } QStringList supportedHashTypes() const { QStringList list; list += "sha1"; list += "sha0"; list += "md5"; return list; } // MAC and Cipher types can go in here }; \endcode Note that InfoContext is itself a feature, so you have to add it to the createContext() method for the provider, as shown below: \code Context *createContext(const QString &type) { if ( type == "sha1" ) return new opensslHashContext( EVP_sha1(), this, type); else if ( type == "sha0" ) return new opensslHashContext( EVP_sha(), this, type); else if ( type == "md5" ) return new opensslHashContext( EVP_md5(), this, type); else if ( type == "info" ) return new opensslInfoContext( this ); else return 0; } \endcode */ /** \page providers Providers %QCA works on the concept of a "provider". There is a limited internal provider (named "default"), but most of the work is done in plugin modules. The logic to selection of a provider is fairly simple. The user can specify a provider name - if that name exists, and the provider supports the requested feature, then the named provider is used. If that didn't work, then the available plugins are searched (based on a priority order) for the requested feature. If that doesn't work, then the default provider is searched for the requested feature. So the only way to get the default provider is to either have no other support whatsoever, or to specify the default provider directly (this goes for the algorithm constructors as well as setGlobalRNG()). You can add your own provider in two ways - as a shared object plugin, and as a part of the client code. The shared object plugin needs to be able to be found using the built-in scan logic - this normally means you need to install it into the plugins/crypto subdirectory within the directory that Qt is installed to. This will make it available for all applications. If you have a limited application domain (such as a specialist algorithm, or a need to be bug-compatible), you may find it easier to create a client-side provider, and add it using the QCA::insertProvider call. There is an example of this - see the AES-CMAC example. */