Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework

Cryptography Basics

Cryptography is the science—or some would say, art—of protecting data by converting it (encrypting it) into a seemingly incomprehensible format (referred to as cipher text) so that unauthorized persons cannot gain access to the original data, or would probably have to work for years to unprotect it. Cryptography is particularly important in data transfers that take place over a network, such as the inherently unsafe Internet. Additionally, cryptography is not used only to secure data; it can also be used to verify that the data originated from a particular sender and not someone spoofing a valid sender's ID for malicious purposes. Having said that, here's a list of the most important cryptographic operations:

• Data encryption: ...