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Add a missing word in the README.md file.
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jlouis committed Dec 1, 2014
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Expand Up @@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ This implements cryptography where there is a shared secret key between parties.

# Rationale

Doing crypto right in Erlang is not that easy. For one, the crypto system has to be rather fast, which rules out Erlang as the main vehicle. Second, cryptographic systems must be void of timing attacks. This mandates we write the code in a language where we can such timing attacks, which leaves only C as a contender, more or less. The obvious way to handle this is by the use of NIF implementations, but most C code will run to its conclusion once set off for processing. This is a major problem for a system which needs to keep its latency in check. The solution taken by this library is to use the new Dirty Scheduler API of Erlang in order to provide a safe way to handle the long-running cryptographic processing. It keeps the cryptographic primitives on the dirty schedulers and thus it avoids the major problem.
Doing crypto right in Erlang is not that easy. For one, the crypto system has to be rather fast, which rules out Erlang as the main vehicle. Second, cryptographic systems must be void of timing attacks. This mandates we write the code in a language where we can avoid such timing attacks, which leaves only C as a contender, more or less. The obvious way to handle this is by the use of NIF implementations, but most C code will run to its conclusion once set off for processing. This is a major problem for a system which needs to keep its latency in check. The solution taken by this library is to use the new Dirty Scheduler API of Erlang in order to provide a safe way to handle the long-running cryptographic processing. It keeps the cryptographic primitives on the dirty schedulers and thus it avoids the major problem.

Focus has first and foremost been on the correct use of dirty schedulers, without any regard for speed. The plan is to extend the underlying implementation, while keeping the API stable. In a future version, we might want to make simple short-lived crypto-calls directly on the Erlang scheduler rather than moving these to a separate scheduler and paying the price of scheduler invocation.

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