Programming Visual Basic 2008

Chapter 11. Security

Secrets are funny things. With billions of people on the planet, there is no shortage of really interesting events and stories, but none of them will hold our interest if there is a secret to be discovered somewhere else. For instance, former associate director of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, revealed himself to be the famous “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame, but not before 30 years of speculation and whispering about this secret identity had passed by. Other secrets are just as intriguing, even if we are in on the secret. Superman is fascinating in part due to his secret alter ego, Clark Kent. Many books include the word Secret in their titles to make them and their topics more interesting, titles such as Japanese Cooking Secrets.

In this era of information overload and increasingly permissive moral standards on television, secrets seem to be scarce. But everyone has important information that he needs to keep protected from others, and that includes the users of your programs. Fortunately, .NET programs and related data can be as secure as you need, if you use the security features available to you in the .NET Framework.

Here’s a secret that I’ll tell right now: I really don’t know that much about computer security issues. Back in the early 1980s, I worked for a computer vendor that was coming out with its own Unix System V implementation. The company needed to confirm that its product would be sufficiently secure for governmental sales, and I was tasked ...