Swift Crypto

This is one of the first fruits born of the three-fold Swift 6 initiative [0]: 1) Accelerate growth of the Swift software ecosystem (cross platform tooling and libraries) , 2) Create a fantastic development experience (build times and debugging), 3) Invest in user-empowering language directions (language APIs and memory ownership model, etc).<p>This hits almost all of those, and while it isn&#x27;t the highest priority for lots of Swift users today, Swift Crypto will hopefully create a way for there to be lots of future users of Swift on other platforms. I&#x27;m really happy that the Core Team seems to have really taken those 3 efforts seriously.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forums.swift.org&#x2F;t&#x2F;on-the-road-to-swift-6&#x2F;32862" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forums.swift.org&#x2F;t&#x2F;on-the-road-to-swift-6&#x2F;32862</a>

Why was BoringSSL chosen as the backend? According to Google,<p>&gt; Although BoringSSL is an open source project, it is not intended for general use, as OpenSSL is. We don&#x27;t recommend that third parties depend upon it. Doing so is likely to be frustrating because there are no guarantees of API or ABI stability.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boringssl.googlesource.com&#x2F;boringssl&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boringssl.googlesource.com&#x2F;boringssl&#x2F;</a>

&gt; On Apple platforms, Swift Crypto defers directly to CryptoKit, while on all other platforms it uses a brand-new implementation built on top of the BoringSSL library.<p>Oh great, more pointless differences. Just pick one and stick to it. If you trust the BoringSSL version then use it everywhere. If you don&#x27;t, well, why are you using it on the other platforms?<p>I could understand it if it was very platform-specific (async networking, GUI controls, whatever). But come on, BSSL already exists everywhere, you&#x27;re not saving yourself any porting work.

How is the state of developing Swift application on Windows? Last I checked it was using Linux on Windows to compile Swift code.<p>With Linux and Windows support, Swift can become viable for cross platform development.

This, combined with Apple claiming that the Afterburner card for Mac Pro is a programmable ASIC, is pretty interesting news.<p>&gt; The new Mac Pro debuts Afterburner, featuring a programmable ASIC capable of decoding up to 6.3 billion pixels per second <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;apple-unveils-powerful-all-new-mac-pro-and-groundbreaking-pro-display-xdr&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;2019&#x2F;06&#x2F;apple-unveils-powerfu...</a>

The first example shows AES.GCM.seal(...) and then states:<p>&gt; This code avoids some of the numerous pitfalls that you can encounter when constructing encryption schemes yourself. For example, it ensures that you use a randomly selected nonce, and that you authenticate your ciphertext.<p>The AES-GCM nonce is only 96 bits, which <i>might</i> be enough in many contexts, but is still a little short for comfort when selecting nonces randomly: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imperialviolet.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;14&#x2F;aesgcmsiv.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imperialviolet.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;14&#x2F;aesgcmsiv.html</a><p>It&#x27;s surprising that the blog post just declared success without bringing this up at all.<p>(It looks like AES.GCM.seal does let you specify the nonce, though, in cases where you can maintain a counter yourself.)

&gt;This will allow Swift developers, regardless of the platform on which they deploy their applications, to access these APIs for a common set of cryptographic operations.<p>How often is swift used on a non-Apple platform? Also why?

Oh great! I spent half an hour the other day figuring out how to do MD5 on Swift without CommonCrypto or Xcode.<p>The best answer was perfect swift libraries, which linked to OpenSSL but damn it was hard to figure out.<p>It is still too painful to write Swift outside of the blessed Apple world. This is a step, but still a long way to go.

We are fast approaching Swift 6, and most of the Apps by Apple are still strictly Objective-C ( Not saying it is a bad thing ). Even the new Apply Pay App is Objective-C.<p>Where is Swift heading? If Apple isn&#x27;t dogfooding it themselves.

So I wonder if in a future Swift for Windows, will Windows.Security.Cryptography be made use of, or only Apple gets special treatment.

I want something like this for python or C.

Without knowing the .org, I thought this was going to be about SWIFT, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swift.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.swift.com</a> , the electronic funds transfer service, working on some sort of blockchain or cryptocurrency related announcement.