Why do people use bouncycastle instead of Java Cryptography Extension? What is the difference?
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220answers:
2
+1
Q:
Why do people use bouncycastle instead of Java Cryptography Extension? What is the difference?
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A:
BouncyCastle has many more cipher suites and algorithms than the default JCE provided by Sun.
In addition to that, BouncyCastle has lots of utilities for reading arcane formats like PEM and ASN.1 that no sane person would want to rewrite themselves.
Kevin
2010-05-28 10:15:41
Sun never intended to be an exhaustive provider of ciphers. It's why JCE uses the provider framework which BC supports http://bouncycastle.org/specifications.html#install . Any users of BC would be wise to use it through the JCE APIs when possible.
nicerobot
2010-05-28 11:07:11
A:
On server or desktop, I don't see any reason to use BC unless you have to deal with some legacy ciphers or formats not supported by Sun JCE.
However, many JREs don't come with a JCE provider, like on mobile or embedded environments. BC comes handy in such cases.
ZZ Coder
2010-05-28 13:15:57