Trail of Bits is excited to announce that, with support from the Alpha-Omega initiative, they’re building a modern, high-performance ASN.1 API for PyCA Cryptography. This new API addresses some long-standing pain points in the Python ecosystem and is a major step toward making ASN.1 parsing faster, safer, and more Pythonic.
Here’s what’s coming:
-
Performance: We’re leveraging a pure Rust ASN.1 parser—already used in PyCA Cryptography’s X.509 stack—to deliver near-native parsing speeds.
-
Differential Reduction: By consolidating around a single, well-audited parser, we’re reducing the need for fragmented, “mix and match” ASN.1 solutions that can introduce differential vulnerabilities.
-
Modernization: The API will feature a declarative,
dataclasses-style interface with full type hints, making it intuitive, idiomatic, and fully compatible with static analysis tools.
This work brings together speed, safety, and developer experience in one cohesive package.
👉 Check out the full blog post over on the Trail of Bits website to dive deeper into the details and what this means for the Python cryptography ecosystem.
