Microsoft® .NET Compact Framework Kick Start

Using Session Keys to Encrypt and Decrypt Data

To understand how to perform encryption and decryption with a session key, readers must first have a deep understanding of what session keys are, how to create them, and how to persist and share them. The session keys aren't actually used for encryption and decryption until the end of this section.

A session key is an encryption key that is shared between two parties to perform encryption and decryption or used by only a single machine for encryption and decryption. One way to derive a session key is to generate a unique password on the fly as needed. This technique was discussed in the previous section. The problem with this technique is that it doesn't provide a way to share a session key securely ...