Security for Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET

Encryption in the Real World

At the end of most chapters in this book, you’ll find a section like this one that explores where you might use techniques learned in the chapter in your own real-world projects. Encryption has a number of uses but two main purposes:

• Securely storing sensitive information on a disk or in a database so that it can be accessed only by an authorized person or software program.

• Scrambling information so it can be transported from one trusted system to another trusted system over an insecure transport such as the Internet. Some specific examples are listed here:

  • Authenticating passwords. This can be done using either a hash digest or a private key. Hash digests are a good choice when the password is used only for validating ...