CryptoStudio has been developed using Visual Studio ver. 7.1. It uses MCF. For the GUI, I have used code freely available on Internet (see "about" dialog or look at the sources for more info). The idea behind the program is simple. Once compiled (on Windows platform), OpenSSL builds the executable openssl.exe e two libraries (libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll). Openssl.exe is a command line program to be used from a DOS shell. For example, to generate a RSA private key the line "openssl genrsa 1024" may be used. The idea is to let openssl.exe do the hard job for us. The solution is to build a specific command line within CryptoStudio, launch openssl.exe in pipe with that line, get the results and, finally, redirect them in the output window of CryptoStudio. However, creating reliable pipes in Windows has been quite hard. You can find details in RedirectProcess.cpp.

Some functionalities does not launch openssl.exe in pipe but are implemented using directly the functions exported from libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll. These are Crypto Parser, Crypto Search, PKCS#7 management, PKCS#11 and others.

CryptoStudio can be used also with your own version of openssl.exe (set the new path in File>Options dialog). At the moment, the version provided with the program is 0.9.7f.

To compile sources, you need OpenSSL headers and libraries from OpenSSL site.