.NET Security and Cryptography

Modern Ciphers

Modern ciphers do not operate on a set of letters such as A through Z, but Caesar was probably unfamiliar with the concept of bits and bytes! Instead, modern ciphers use numbers, sometimes extremely large numbers, to represent keys and plaintext or chunks of plaintext. Arithmetic is used to implement encryption; however, it may not always be the arithmetic you recall from grade school.

Cryptography and the .NET Framework

The .NET Framework class library provides the System.Security.Cryptography namespace, which supports the most important symmetric and asymmetric ciphers as well as several secure hash algorithms and a cryptographic-quality random number generator. This cryptography architecture is extensible, allowing third parties ...