Bouncy Castle Crypto Provider Package version 1.55 now available

Hello everybody,

This release sees further work on the post-quantum provider with the 
addition of the NewHope (March 2016 version) key exchange algorithm and 
the SPHINCS signature algorithm. The McEliece implementation has also 
been revised and now has KeyFactory implementation for it as well. The 
DANE API has been updated to reflect the latest standard changes. SHA-3 
support has been added for HMAC as well as for the DSA, ECDSA, DDSA, and 
ECDDSA signature algorithms. SHA-3 support has also been added for RSA 
signatures and OAEP encryption. Support has been added for the GOST 
R34.11-2012 message digest as well. The TSP API now supports millisecond 
resolution in time-stamps and TLS supports RFC 7685 and ECDH_anon key 
exchange. The CMS password recipient generator now supports PRFs other 
than SHA-1 as well.

In terms of bug fixes: issues with cloning of BLAKE digests, an 
occasional error in the Poly1305 calculator, UserNotice issues with 
empty sequences, and validation issues with time-stamp requests 
containing extensions have all been fixed. CRMF now recognises when 
non-default OAEP parameters are used and issues around the encoding of 
parameters for ECIES/IES have also been addressed.
For more details go to our latest releases page:

http://www.bouncycastle.org/latest_releases.html

And for those who like living on the bleeding edge, the betas for future 
releases can be downloaded from:

http://www.bouncycastle.org/betas/

and changes to the code base can be tracked via:

https://github.com/bcgit

As always we are grateful to the people and organisations who have 
contributed/donated to the project and you can find the updated list at 
http://www.bouncycastle.org/contributors.html We would also like to 
thank holders of Crypto Workshop support contracts as once again we were 
able to contribute additional time back to this release through left 
over consulting time provided as part of the support agreements.

In other news the FIPS API has now passed NIST review and we are now 
well into the co-ordination period. If you are interested in the 
project, the draft User Guide for the APIs is now available at 
https://www.bouncycastle.org/fips/BCUserGuide.pdf and the draft security 
policy is at https://www.bouncycastle.org/fips/BCSecurityPolicy.pdf 
Please contact us at [email protected] if you are interested in 
joining the early access program for the FIPS APIs.

If you are interested helping support the Bouncy Castle project through 
donation, you can find the details on how to donate via PayPal or 
Bitcoin, at:

https://www.bouncycastle.org/donate

If you prefer to use direct bank transfer please feel free to discuss it 
with us by contacting us at [email protected] and we'll be happy 
help. The Legion of the Bouncy Castle Inc is a registered Australian 
charity based in the State of Victoria, Australia.

If you wish to sponsor specific work on Bouncy Castle or get a 
commercial support contract for the APIs please contact us at Crypto 
Workshop ( http://www.cryptoworkshop.com )

Remember, you can also follow this project on Facebook ( 
https://www.facebook.com/legionofthebouncycastle ), Google+ ( 
https://plus.google.com/+BouncycastleOrgAPIs/posts ) and/or Twitter ( 
https://twitter.com/bccrypto ).

Finally, for users of the maven repositories, 1.55 should be appearing 
shortly on maven central. The GitHub repository has been updated as well.