This is Eric Young's SSL and Crypto library. It includes libssl.a: An implementation of Netscapes SSL v 2 protocol. This library implements the SSL protocol. libcrypto.a: General encryption and X509 stuff needed by SSL but not actually logically part of it. It includes routines for the following: RC4 encryption, IDEA encryption - 4 different modes, ecb, cbc, cfb and ofb. SHA (SHA-0) and SHA-1 message digest algorithms, RSA encryption/decryption/key generation. There is no limit on the number of bits. Diffie-Hellman key-exchange/key generation. There is no limit on the number of bits. X509 encoding/decoding into/from binary ASN1 and a PEM based ascii-binary encoding which supports encryption with a private key. As this is a FreeBSD port, it has been tailored to FreeBSD. It uses the DES, MD2 and MD5 from FreeBSD 2.2+. Earlier versions of freebsd have a DES library that is missing bits, and SSLeay will not compile properly. The answer is to get the latest secure/ dist.