Why do people use bouncycastle instead of Java embedded in the JCE provider? What is the difference?

Question

Why do people use bouncycastle instead of the Java Cryptography Extension? What is the difference?

Answer 1

BouncyCastle has many more sets and encryption algorithms than the default JCE provided by Sun.

In addition to this, BouncyCastle has many utilities for reading mysterious formats, such as PEM and ASN.1, which no sane person would want to rewrite themselves.

Answer 2

Bouncy Castle is Australian in origin and therefore not subject to Export cryptography from the USA .

This is useful if you are outside the United States and you need to manage larger key sizes than are permitted by such restrictions. In this case, you are not allowed to use software from the USA for this.

Answer 3

On the server or on the desktop, I see no reason to use BC unless you need to deal with some legacy ciphers or formats not supported by Sun JCE.

However, many JREs do not ship with the JCE provider, for example, in mobile or embedded environments. BC is useful in such cases.