The AmiSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop a port of OpenSSL in a shared library for Amiga-based systems (AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS, etc). OpenSSL (www.openssl.org) is "an open source project that provides a robust, commercial-grade, and full-featured toolkit for the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocols. It is also a general-purpose cryptography library."

The library together with its provided software development kit (SDK) tries to be 100% API/ABI compatible to the OpenSSL version it is based on. Due to it being a shared library, it can be used by several Amiga applications at the same time, without wasting resources.

AmiSSL v5 is a new major release which has been updated with full compatibility with OpenSSL 3.4. This includes important security related fixes, a built-in HTTP(S) client and comes with the latest encryption ciphers which are required nowadays to connect to modern SSL-based services such as HTTPS and SSH.

General

AmiSSL consists of four major components: the shared libraries, the public root CA certificates, a port of the OpenSSL command-line tool and the developer SDK.

Libraries

The main library is amisslmaster.library which acts as a proxy and opens the appropriate AmiSSL library (with compatibility to a certain OpenSSL version) for the programs using AmiSSL. This mechanism allows different AmiSSL versions to be installed in parallel, due to different applications potentially requiring different versions. For this reason, it is important that the latest version of amisslmaster.library is always installed.

The actual OpenSSL implementations are located in the shared libraries that are usually stored inside the AmiSSL:Libs/AmiSSL directory. With the exception of AmiSSL v1 libraries, none of them should be opened directly, but instead via amisslmaster.library. The technical details on this can be found in AmiSSL SDK documentation (see README-SDK).

The previous versions of libraries in AmiSSL directory should be kept when a new version of AmiSSL is released since they may still be used, as sometimes changes in the OpenSSL API/ABI or public structures mean that backwards compatibility cannot be maintained, usually for major OpenSSL updates only. When this is not an issue, the installer will delete any old versions that are no longer required and applications will benefit automatically from using the latest version without themselves needing to be recompiled/updated.

Root CA Certificates

Each AmiSSL version is supplied with a full set of root CA certificates which have been synchronized to the ones the Mozilla group usually distribute with their products (e.g. Mozilla Firefox, etc.) and are stored in the AmiSSL:Certs directory. When installing new updated AmiSSL versions, these certificates are updated and expired ones are removed.

It is recommended that you do not manually add certificates to the AmiSSL:Certs directory, but if you did, you should back them up and copy them back after installing the latest AmiSSL. Normally, you should add and maintain your own certificates in the AmiSSL:UserCerts directory, so that no future AmiSSL release will delete them. Applications should store certificates in AmiSSL:UserCerts and private keys in AmiSSL:Private.

The 'OpenSSL' command-line tool

A port of the OpenSSL tool is also included and usually installed to AmiSSL: or C: during installation. It is a "command line tool for using the various cryptography functions of OpenSSL's crypto library from the shell". The documentation for the OpenSSL tool is included in the archive and can also be reviewed online. A sample openssl.cnf file is also installed to AmiSSL:, if it doesn't already exist, along with the CA.pl helper script, both of which aid the certificate generation features of the OpenSSL tool. The tsget.pl script is also included.

Developer SDK

The AmiSSL SDK contains everything a developer needs to use OpenSSL in their applications, including C header files, Autodocs, autoopen link library, stub link library, examples and library interface description files. The first point of call being the README-SDK file which explains what needs to be done.

Backwards Compatibility

All applications compiled to use previous versions of AmiSSL v5 will automatically use the latest version once installed. Old applications will continue to use AmiSSL v4 or older and will need to be recompiled with the updated SDK in order to start using AmiSSL v5. Besides this difference, AmiSSL v5 can be installed on top of any previous AmiSSL versions, which ensures that applications compiled for AmiSSL v1/v2/v3/v4 continue to work.

Requirements

AmiSSL requires an Amiga-compatible operating system being installed (AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS) with exec.library v38+ compatibility. Currently, AmiSSL is compatible with AmigaOS 4.0+/PPC, AmigaOS 3.0+/68020+ and MorphOS.

Installation

AmiUpdate may be used by AmigaOS 4.x users to automatically download and install any new AmiSSL version. Otherwise, the latest release archive can be downloaded from any of the following URLs:

https://github.com/jens-maus/amissl/releases
http://aminet.net/search?query=amissl-5

Once downloaded it should be unarchived to a temporary directory and the "Install" script used accordingly.

Legal information

AmiSSL v1    Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Andrija Antonijevic.
AmiSSL v2/v3 Copyright (c) 2002-2006 Andrija Antonijevic and Stefan Burstroem.
AmiSSL v4/v5 Copyright (c) 2014-2024 AmiSSL Open Source Team.
All Rights Reserved.

OpenSSL Cryptography and SSL/TLS Toolkit
Copyright (c) 1995-2024 The OpenSSL Project Authors. All Rights Reserved.

AmiSSL uses a modified version of OpenSSL. Both AmiSSL and OpenSSL
are licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License in the file LICENSE in the
source distribution or at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.

68060 optimised 64-bit multiplication routines
Copyright (c) 2001-2022 Frank Wille. All Rights Reserved.

OpenSSL BIGNUM 68020-68040 optimised routines
Copyright (c) 2002 by Howard Chu <hyc@highlandsun.com>

Authors

AmiSSL is a collaborative effort with Amiga-specific code being contributed by the following people:

• Andrija Antonijevic
• Thore Böckelmann
• Stefan Burstroem
• Howard Chu
• Jens Maus
• Gunther Nikl
• Oliver Roberts
• Frank Wille