What's the use for the new dll "sunec.dll" file along with JAVA7

Question

I just noticed there is one new dll file named sunec.dll since JAVA7.

I tried Googling a lot about this file but in vain.

Can anyone provide an introduction about this new file here??

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

The main reason is to enable Elliptic Curve Cryptography on all platforms. See the JDK 7 Adoption Guide:

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)

A new native provider has been added to the JDK 7 release that provides several ECC-based algorithms (ECDSA/ECDH). Having an ECC provider also enables ECC-based JSSE ciphersuites on all platforms. Previously, only platforms with a native PKCS11 ECC implementation (e.g. Solaris) could use ECC-based ciphersuites out of the box. For more information, see SunEC Provider's Supported Algorithms in the Java Cryptography Architecture Oracle Providers Documentation (JDK 7 Guides).

Answer 2

It's one of the crypto libraries, this particular one provides Elliptical Curve Cryptography as per this page here.