Summary

The .NET Framework contains a rich and extensible collection of classes that make it very easy to use cryptography within your own programs. As shipped, the cryptography classes include support for the most common algorithms for performing symmetric key encryption, public key encryption, public key digital signatures, and hash computations, including the new Advanced Encryption Standard algorithms Rijndael (encryption) and SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512 (hash functions). You can also add your own algorithms to the system through subclassing.

In this chapter, we have demonstrated only the most common and basic cryptographic operations. Chapter 31 builds on this chapter and discusses advanced topics, including interacting with the Win32 CryptoAPI directly, as well as how to use the cryptographic configuration system to change default algorithms and make new algorithms “known” to the system.