Introducing Visual C# 2010

Chapter 37. Cryptography and Security

When the .NET Framework was first released, it contained an extensive set of security and cryptographic features. Of particular note was the ability to apply strict controls over the use of your .NET assemblies through a sophisticated policy system. The security features were very comprehensive and so complicated that pretty much no one ever used them. With .NET 4, almost all the security features have been deprecated and are no longer supported, which leaves only the cryptographic features. Fortunately, the same attention to detail that went into the abandoned policy system was also applied to the cryptographic support, which means there is a comprehensive range of algorithms and support classes available ...