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Introduction 2018 update: This article was 4 years old, and even then presented disputable opinion. Many things have changed since then, we're having TLS 1.3, which eliminates a number of cryptographic concerns and enforces correct uses. Still, many challenges stand unaddressed. We've remixed the article to keep relevant problems, and outline solutions to those solved, along with a few thoughts on what and when you can use instead. Everyday software developers trust SSL / TLS encryption to protect their communications without considering whether or not this is the right thing to do.

Introduction Imagine you'd like to build your own chat server, which allows clients to exchange messages safely. You have a simple infrastructure consisting of a server written in Ruby and clients for iOS and Android. This is exactly what the famous Mobile websocket example provides. We have modified it to illustrate how simple it is to add security features using Themis. In this tutorial, we'll try to preserve as much of it's simplicity and architecture as possible, but add cryptographic protection.

As we've stated in the past, the Themis library grew out of our own needs for a secure, efficient and convenient cryptographic library. While providing abstracted high-level services, Themis uses trusted, well established implementations of cryptographic primitives such as those provided by LibreSSL/OpenSSL or platform native cryptography providers. With the upcoming v0.9.2 release of the Themis library, we will be announcing a new set of features called "Secure Comparator". As distinct from the current set of Themis functions, Secure Comparator not only uses existing implementations of cryptographic math but also our own in house developments - as we could find no suitable public implementations for some of operations with ECC curve ed25519.

How we did usability testing for Themis when releasing the open source library into public. When we were ready to release Themis, we've gathered a few colleagues and decided to make a test run on unsuspecting developers - how would the library blend into their workflows? 1. Introduction While usability testing for user-centric applications has it's own distinct techniques, standards and frameworks, this is not so typical for a relatively complex and technical library aimed at developers and spanning multiple languages and platforms.

We are proud to present Themis, a novel cryptographic services library. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch. (The Cathedral and the Bazaar) What is Themis? Themis is a high-level cryptographic services library: a library that provides easy to use, highly abstracted set of functions for solving real-world security problems. We would like you to focus on building your software with security taken care of by professionals, instead of scrupulously assembling the building blocks of cryptosystems, resolving implementations, platform availability, vulnerabilities, and performance constraints yourself.