# Introduction Sodium is a modern, easy-to-use software library for encryption, decryption, signatures, password hashing, and more. It is a portable, cross-compilable, installable, and packageable fork of [NaCl](http://nacl.cr.yp.to/), with a compatible but extended API to improve usability even further. Its goal is to provide all of the core operations needed to build higher-level cryptographic tools. Sodium is cross-platform and cross-language. It runs on many compilers and operating systems, including Windows (with MinGW or Visual Studio, x86, x86\_64 and arm64), iOS, and Android. JavaScript and WebAssembly versions are also available and fully supported. Furthermore, bindings for all common programming languages are available and well-supported. The design choices emphasize security and ease of use. But despite the emphasis on high security, primitives are faster across-the-board than most implementations. ## Downloading libsodium [libsodium 1.0.22-stable](https://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/) is the latest version. * [Tarballs and pre-compiled binaries](https://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/) * [GitHub repository](https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium) * [Documentation](https://doc.libsodium.org) ## Mailing list A mailing list is available to discuss libsodium. To join, just send a random email to `sodium-subscribe` {at} `pureftpd`{dot}`org`. ## License [ISC license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license). See the `LICENSE` file for details. ## Thanks! Sodium is developed by volunteers. We would like to especially thank the following companies and organizations for their contribution: * [Paragonie Initiative Enterprise](https://paragonie.com/), who donated a Raspberry Pi to ensure that the library works perfectly on this hardware. Thanks! * [Private Internet Access](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com), who sponsored a [complete security audit](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/libsodium-audit-results/). This is amazing, thanks! * [Maximilian Blochberger](https://github.com/blochberger) and Joshua Small, who both generously donated $100. This will help cover the infrastructure costs a lot. Thanks again, Max and Joshua! People who designed the primitives and wrote implementations the library is based on can be found in the [AUTHORS](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jedisct1/libsodium/master/AUTHORS) file. This project wouldn’t exist without them. Also, a huge “thank you” to people and companies who contributed bindings for their favorite programming languages. A list can be found in the [THANKS](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jedisct1/libsodium/master/THANKS) file. Another huge “thank you” to package maintainers who have been doing an amazing job at building packages for many distributions and operating systems. Finally, thanks to **you** for reading this documentation and for the awesome projects you are going to build with this library! --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/readme.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.