From 80a1ea8507cb0a0cc507a68c21aa7245ddca37b7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Frank Denis Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2014 12:19:04 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Reintroduce 08a4a043d4e2df0f7a947d16986a059e6dd90a3c minus the FUD. --- README.markdown | 12 ++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+) diff --git a/README.markdown b/README.markdown index b291ef91..be78f3a4 100644 --- a/README.markdown +++ b/README.markdown @@ -13,6 +13,18 @@ higher-level cryptographic tools. Sodium is a portable, cross-compilable, installable, packageable fork of NaCl (based on the latest released upstream version [nacl-20110221](http://hyperelliptic.org/nacl/nacl-20110221.tar.bz2)), with a compatible API. +The design choices, particularly in regard to the Curve25519 +Diffie-Hellman function, emphasize security (whereas NIST curves +emphasize "performance" at the cost of security), and "magic +constants" in NaCl/Sodium are picked by theorems designed to maximize +security. + +The same cannot be said of NIST curves, where the specific origins of +certain constants are not described by the standards. + +And despite the emphasis on higher security, primitives are faster +across-the-board than most implementations of the NIST standards. + ## Portability In order to pick the fastest working implementation of each primitive,