Getting started with OpenSSL: Cryptography basics

This article is the first of two on cryptography basics using OpenSSL, a production-grade library and toolkit popular on Linux and other systems. (To install the most recent version of OpenSSL, see here.) OpenSSL utilities are available at the command line, and programs can call functions from the OpenSSL libraries. The sample program for this article is in C, the source language for the OpenSSL libraries.

The two articles in this series cover—collectively—cryptographic hashes, digital signatures, encryption and decryption, and digital certificates. You can find the code and command-line examples in a ZIP file from my website.

The link for this article located at Opensource.com is no longer available.