gpkcs11 - cryptographic token access for Unix

What Is gpkcs11?

It is an implementation of the PKCS #11: Cryptographic Token Interface Standard, that you may freely download and distribute.

This software is only available in source code and is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The source code package also includes an interactive shell that is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Please refer to the file README for further explanations. Please note that this software is aimed at developers of applications with cryptographics functions and requires programming expertise to make use of. gpkcs11 is still in development and may lead to loss of data and has potential security holes. TC TrustCenter is not liable to any damages, direct or indirect, that arise through the use of the software.

PKCS#11 defines an interface for the communication of arbitrary applications with systems that perform cryptogrphic operations, like en- and decryption, signing and verifying. These systems, called token, may be Chipcards (with appropriate reader), discrete hardware systems or pure software implementations.

gpkcs11 provides support functions to make the development of support for new tokens easier and contains a complete software token, as well as an automated testing environment. In a later version this software token will be usable as complete and secure tool for cryptographic applications. In this phase gpkcs11 may serve as a testing tool in the development of new applications that contain cryptographic support.

Here you may download the latest version. The code was tested on Solaris 2.5.1/SPARC and successfully compiles on Linux 2.0.36/i386 as well. It should run on other UNIX platforms as well. Only the creation of shared libraries may cause problems. The libtool is used in order to help solve those problems on plattforms where it is supported. Unfortunately we do not have acces to other plattforms, but would be very interested in any reports on your experiences. The development is being done on Windows NT in parallel, and is buildable on it as well.

Starting with version 0.5.6 for the the workspace and project files for Microsofts Visual C++ 6.0 are included. This is a kind of trial balloon. The whole system is not buildable without manual intervention (e.g. you still need the seperate OpenSSL library). But the projects should help build gpkcs11 on Win32.