Professional Visual Studio® 2008

28.5. Summary

This chapter demonstrated how cryptography can be used to establish a secure communication channel between multiple parties. Multiple steps are required to set up this channel, involving a combination of symmetric and asymmetric algorithms. When you're deciding on a security scheme for your application, it is important to remember the four goals of cryptography: authentication, non-repudiation, integrity, and confidentiality. Not all applications require that all of these goals be achieved, and a piecemeal approach might be necessary to balance performance and usability against security.

Now that you have seen how to protect the data in your application, the next chapter shows you how to use the technique of obfuscation to protect the embedded logic within your application from being reverse-engineered.