Today I’ve released version 0.8.0 of Geierlein, the free Elster client written in HTML5 & JavaScript. Release aspects are, among others

  • bumping the Firefox MaxVersion to 41, to allow using it on the Firefox 41 XUL engine
  • upgrade of the included JavaScript crypto library Forge
  • switching over to RSAES-OAEP encryption scheme (from good old PKCS#7 scheme)

The encryption scheme switch on one hand was necessary, since the API will cease PKCS#7 support in April 2016, while currently supporting both schemes (actually since April 2015, when they opened the door for RSAES-OAEP). Besides that I wanted to make the switch early, since I consider going with better encryption is always the better option.

As Forge didn’t yet support RSAES-OAEP I spent some time implementing it back in August. My pull request on Forge unfortunately is still pending, as Dave is working on an upcoming API change.

Nevertheless Geierlein already ships the patch, so RSAES-OAEP/CMS is used from now on.