Nettle (cryptographic library)

An API which fits one application well may not work well in a different context resulting in a proliferation of cryptographic libraries designed for particular applications. Nettle is an attempt to avoid this problem by doing one thing (the low-level cryptography) and providing a simple and general interface to it. In particular, Nettle doesn't do algorithm selection, memory allocation or any I/O. Thus Nettle is intended to provide a core cryptography library upon which numerous application and context specific interfaces can be built. The code, test cases, benchmarks, documentation, etc. of these interfaces can then be shared without having to replicate Nettle's cryptographic code.^[6]

Nettle is primarily licensed under a dual licence scheme comprising The GNU General Public License version 2 or later and The GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 or later. A few individual files are licensed under more permissive licences or in the public domain. The copyright notices at the top of the library's source files precisely define the licence status of particular files.^[7]

The Nettle manual "is in the public domain" and may be used and reproduced freely.^[8]

• Botan
• Bouncy Castle
• Cryptlib
• Libgcrypt
• Crypto++
• Comparison of cryptography libraries