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| -rw-r--r-- | docs/index.rst | 42 |
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 23 deletions
diff --git a/docs/index.rst b/docs/index.rst index 9c9ad4a0..0aa4725a 100644 --- a/docs/index.rst +++ b/docs/index.rst @@ -1,9 +1,24 @@ Welcome to ``cryptography`` =========================== -``cryptography`` is a Python library which exposes cryptographic recipes and -primitives. Our goal is for it to be your "cryptographic standard library". If -you are interested in learning more about the field of cryptography, we +``cryptography`` includes both high level recipes, and low level interfaces to +common cryptographic algorithms such as symmetric ciphers, message digests and +key derivation functions. For example, to encrypt something with +``cryptography``'s high level symmetric encryption recipe: + +.. code-block:: pycon + + >>> from cryptography.fernet import Fernet + >>> # Put this somewhere safe! + >>> key = Fernet.generate_key() + >>> f = Fernet(key) + >>> token = f.encrypt(b"A really secret message. Not for prying eyes.") + >>> token + '...' + >>> f.decrypt(token) + 'A really secret message. Not for prying eyes.' + +If you are interested in learning more about the field of cryptography, we recommend `Crypto 101, by Laurens Van Houtven`_. Installation @@ -16,28 +31,9 @@ You can install ``cryptography`` with ``pip``: See :doc:`Installation <installation>` for more information. -Why a new crypto library for Python? ------------------------------------- - -If you've done cryptographic work in Python before, you've probably seen some -other libraries in Python, such as *M2Crypto*, *PyCrypto*, or *PyOpenSSL*. In -building ``cryptography`` we wanted to address a few issues we observed in the -existing libraries: - -* Lack of PyPy and Python 3 support. -* Lack of maintenance. -* Use of poor implementations of algorithms (i.e. ones with known side-channel - attacks). -* Lack of high level, "Cryptography for humans", APIs. -* Absence of algorithms such as - :class:`AES-GCM <cryptography.hazmat.primitives.ciphers.modes.GCM>` and - :class:`~cryptography.hazmat.primitives.kdf.hkdf.HKDF`. -* Poor introspectability, and thus poor testability. -* Extremely error prone APIs, and bad defaults. - - .. _cryptography-layout: + Layout ------ |