Nettle is a cryptographic library that is designed to fit easily in more or less any context: In crypto toolkits for object-oriented languages (C++, Python, Pike, ...), in applications like LSH or GNUPG, or even in kernel space.

It tries to solve a problem of providing a common set of cryptographic algorithms for higher-level applications by implementing a context-independent set of cryptographic algorithms. In that light, Nettle doesn't do any memory allocation or I/O, it simply provides the cryptographic algorithms for the application to use in any environment and in any way it needs.

This package contains binary utilities that accompany the library:

- nettle-lfib-stream - generates a pseudo-random stream, using the Knuth lfib (non-cryptographic) pseudo-random generator. - sexp-conv - conversion tool for handling the different flavours of sexp syntax. - pkcs1-conv - converts PKCS#1 keys to sexp format. - nettle-hash - command-line tool to compute message digests such as SHA-1.