C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2013 22:06:45 -0400

I've been thinking about the state of the world, recently, and wondering how I
can help.  It's frustrating, because it seems to me that the technical things
that I might help with tend to be crypto-related, but simple-crypt is about
the limit of what I am capable of.

Then it struck me that I have a huge amount of experience working with
OpenSSL.  Which is kind-of crypto, but at a high enough level that I am less
likely to screw up.

So I wondered about a "simple-tls" (or "simple-ssl" which sounds better to me,
but perhaps only because I am old).  But what would it be?

Well, I imagine a Python 3 library that makes using TLS easier.  And that
might mean:

 - A dead-simple CA:

     > python -m simpletls.ca
     Welcome to Simple TLS CA
     Create a new CA in /current/directory? [Yn]

 - Simple server and client for anonymous clients.  Starting up the server
   should generate the CA automatically, for example.

 - Support for client certificates.  This is the hard, but perhaps interesting
   one.  You could imagine a database of users, full support for CRLs, etc.

Another (selfish) positive is learning how to do Python C interfaces.

A negative is that it's kinda boring, and OpenSSL isn't always that much fun.

But just the CA wrapper seems like it would be hugely useful.  How many times
have I googled for instructions on setting up a basic self-signed CA?

Andrew

PS Since PyPI included stats I've been surprised by the number of downloads
the "simple" packages have been getting (day/week):

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/simple-date   49/367
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/simple-crypt   1/107
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/simple-enum   13/ 83