In this article, Richard takes us through some of the cryptography tools available in the .NET Framework that provide hashing and encryption of different types of data.
Cryptographic Objects in C#: Part 1 (Page 1 of 5 )
Editor's Note: This article's code has been updated to work with the final release of the .Net framework.
The days where developers have to fiddle about with complex APIs and byte lengths of plain text are now over, at least for the .NET developer. Previously, all documentation for the Crypto API was in C, and VB developers who may well have needed to use the Crypto API had to struggle working out API declarations for use within their VB/COM applications.
The .NET framework provides a comprehensive library of cryptographic classes which can be used for anything from hashing passwords, encrypting file contents, to implementing symmetric key exchange sessions over the internet. In the following two articles we'll study the use of these cryptographic objects and simplify some crypto terminology.