Example Programs and crypttool

As mentioned in the JSTK (Java Security Tool Kit) section of the Preface, this book is accompanied by a collection of utilities and example programs, termed as JSTK software. This software includes not only the source files of example programs presented throughout this book but also the various utility programs that I wrote in the course of researching and using Java APIs for this book. Refer to Appendix C for more information on this software.

Example programs are usually good for illustrating use of specific APIs but are not written for flexible handling of input, output and other user specified parameters. In this book, we come across situations when it would be handy to have a tool that could perform some of the operations illustrated earlier in the text but in a more flexible manner. You will find most operations of this kind available through an appropriate command line tool packaged within JSTK.

Example programs illustrated in this chapter can be found in the directory %JSTK_HOME%srcjsbookch3ex1, where the environment variable JSTK_HOME points to the JSTK home directory. The utility program covering most of the operations is crypttool and can be invoked by command "bincrypttool" on a Windows machine and by "bin/crypttool.sh" on a UNIX or Linux machine, from the JSTK home directory. We talk more about this utility in later in this chapter.