Windows Developer Power Tools

17.2 Protecting Your Communications with the Bouncy Castle Cryptography APIs

In these days of increasing interconnectivity, it has become necessary not only to be able to communicate and communicate securely, but to be able to do so using a wide variety of protocols, many of which Windows does not directly support. The Bouncy Castle Cryptography APIs provide the functionality and infrastructure to ease the development of programs by enabling communication using various popular Internet standards.

The Bouncy Castle APIs support a number of messaging formats using both symmetric and asymmetric keys.

Tip

Symmetric encryption uses the same key for encryption and decryption. Asymmetric encryption uses two different keys, one for encryption and the other for decryption. Symmetric encryption ciphers include DES, AES, and IDEA. RSA is an example of an asymmetric cipher.

The APIs also provide classes that allow you to programmatically generate X.509 certificates and PKCS#12 identity files. (X.509 and RSA Security’s PKCS#12 standard have become cornerstones of electronic commerce and secure messaging.)

Bouncy Castle Cryptography APIs at a Glance
Tool	Bouncy Castle Cryptography APIs
Version covered	Beta 3
Home page	http://www.bouncycastle.org/csharp/
Power Tools page	http://www.windevpowertools.com/tools/96
Summary	APIs for encryption, signature, and certificate generation using a variety of Internet standards ...