Message-Id: <199903251752.JAA15290@laguna.eng.sun.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 09:52:20 -0800 (PST)
From: Jan Luehe <luehe@laguna.eng.sun.com>
Subject: Re: JCE Separatism
To: java-security@java.sun.com, brianbradley@att.com
Brian:
> I have recently begun studying the cryptographic features included in the
> JCE. Could you please provide some background as to why these classes were
> split from the standard JDK 1.2 package? I understand about the export
> restrictions, but are there any other reasons? Why were message digests and
> signatures included in the JCA, but ciphers were not?
Exactly for the reason you mentioned: export control restrictions
by the U.S. Commerce Department.
We did not want to impose any of those restrictions on the
JDK core platform, of which the same version ships worldwide.
That's why we separated all export-restricted crypto functionality
into a separate extension, namely JCE.
Jan