The .NET Framework includes a set of cryptographic services that extend the services provided by Windows through the Crypto API. In this article, the author explores the System.Security.Cryptography namespace and the programming model used to apply cryptographic transformations. He discusses reasons why cryptography is easier in .NET than it was before, including the easy programmatic acccess developers have to the cryptography APIs and the difference between symmetric and asymmetric algorithms. Along the way, a brief discussion of the most widely used algorithms, including RSA, DSA, Rijndael, SHA, and other hash algorithms, is provided.
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