Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming

Summary

This chapter covered the basics of security and cryptography. It began with an overview of the security architecture of the .NET Framework and an understanding of how managing access to system capabilities will introduce a new layer of security controls for applications that go through the Windows Store. The chapter introduced the four types of security within Windows and .NET: NTFS, User Access Control (UAC), cryptographic, and programmatic.

It then examined the security tools and functionality that the .NET Framework provides. You looked at the System.Security.Permissions namespace and learned how you can control code access permissions, role-based permissions, and identity permissions. You also learned how to manage code access permissions and UAC for your assembly.

The second half of the chapter looked at cryptography, both the underlying theory and how it can be applied within your applications. You looked at the different types of cryptographic hash algorithms, including SHA, MD5, symmetric key encryption, and PKCS. You should also understand how you can use digital certificates, such as X.509 and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates.

In the next chapter you will move from security to threading. You will dig into how you can use multiple threads and coordinate those threads in your applications.