.NET Security and Cryptography

The Asymmetric AlgorithmHierarchy Class Hierarchy

The asymmetric algorithm class inheritance hierarchy, which is located in the System.Security.Cryptography namespace, is shown in Figure 5-5. Not shown in this figure is that AsymmetricAlgorithm derives from the Object class. Recall from Chapter 4 that the AsymmetricAlgorithm class is abstract and derives into the DSA and RSA classes, which are also abstract. The RSA and DSA classes further derive into the RSACryptoServiceProvider and DSACryptoServiceProvider classes, which provide concrete implementations of the RSA and DSA algorithms. These are both based on the underlying CryptoAPI support provided by the Windows operating system. Other implementations of RSA and DSA may be implemented by either ...