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Google releases Tink, a simple, cross-platform cryptography library

As (increasingly frequent) data leaks have proven, encryption is hard, and good encryption can be even harder. Today, Google has announced the first major release of Tink, an open-source, cross-platform library designed to make secure encryption easier for developers to use correctly.

To achieve this goal, Tink offers a variety of built-in encryption and decryption methods, key generation tools (to be used outside of your code, for safety), key rotation, and remote key support. And as a show of faith in Tink’s security claims, Google themselves use it in a variety of major projects.

Tink provides secure APIs that are easy to use correctly and hard(er) to misuse. It reduces common crypto pitfalls with user-centered design, careful implementation and code reviews, and extensive testing. At Google, Tink is already being used to secure data of many products such as AdMob, Google Pay, Google Assistant, Firebase, the Android Search App, etc.

Tink is open-source, and has been hosted on GitHub since its creation, with the intention of becoming a community project. While Tink began development January of last year, and saw its first release that September, today’s announcement coincides with the release of version 1.2.0. This is a milestone for the project, as it’s the first version to have well-tested support for Android, iOS, and C++. (Go and JavaScript support are currently in-development.)

Tink is available to use today, and interested developers can jump headfirst into the documentation.


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Avatar for Kyle Bradshaw Kyle Bradshaw

Kyle is an author and researcher for 9to5Google, with special interests in Made by Google products, Fuchsia, and uncovering new features.

Got a tip or want to chat? Twitter or Email. Kyle@9to5mac.com