Chapter 2. Getting Started with the CryptoAPI

IN THIS CHAPTER

• CryptoAPI and Cryptographic Service Providers

• Listing CSPs and CSP Types

Many applications today incorporate some form of encryption into their functionality. Unfor-tunately, encryption is a realm of programming with which most programmers do not have much, if any, experience. So how are we supposed to add these capabilities to our applications without hiring a bunch of mathematicians who talk in numbers so that they sound like they're speaking a foreign language?

If you listen carefully, you'll hear the sound of Microsoft riding in from the northwest to save the day, like the hero in an old Clint Eastwood (or John Wayne) Western movie. It just so happens that Microsoft has been building cryptographic capabilities into the Windows operating systems for the past few years.

Microsoft began adding these capabilities to the operating system as an extension that would be installed with its Internet Explorer Web browser and with NT service packs, but now they come as part of the core operating system with Windows 2000. At this point in time, if you have Internet Explorer 3.02 or higher on any version of Windows, you've got these encryption capabilities. These capabilities make advanced encryption available to any programmer through a series of simple API calls. Nothing could be simpler. (Okay, I might be exaggerating a little here; many things are simpler, but this capability still makes adding encryption to your applications quite easy.)

In this chapter, you'll become familiar with some of the basics of the Microsoft CryptoAPI and build a couple of simple applications that use some of the capabilities of the CryptoAPI.