Creating Your Own Encryption / Decryption Program Using VB.NET 2005

Introduction

These days, protecting your valuable information is absolutely vital. 
Anything is possible.  hackers & crackers frequently try to find new ways
to break programs and to find critical information, for their malicious
purposes.  We shouldn’t only care about hackers & crackers, we should be
concerned about coworkers using ( or having access to ) your computer. 
With this article, I will try my best to assist you in protecting valuable
information such as Passwords, account numbers and so on. Before I continue, let
me explain the complicated stuff 🙂

Encryption


Encryption is the translation of data into a secret code, ciphertext. This code is scrambled, and results in an unreadable ( at least by a normal person ) string of characters.

There are 2 types of Encryption :
Asymetric
Asymmetric Encryption is a form of Encryption where keys come in pairs. What one key encrypts, only the other can decrypt. Asymmetric Encryption is also known as Public Key Cryptography, since users typically create a matching key pair, and make one public while keeping the other secret.

Symetric
Symmetric Encryption is an Encryption algorithm where the same key is used for both Encryption and Decryption. The key must be kept secret, and is shared by the message sender and recipient.

Decryption


Decryption is the process of decoding data that has been encrypted into a secret format. Decryption requires a secret key or password.

Encryption methods


Having a look into the System.Security.Cryptography namespace will give you great insight:

System.Security.Cryptography Namespace

Rijndael method


The Rijndael encryption algorithm has been designed to replace the aging DES algorithm. Like DES, it is a block cipher. It uses 128-bit, 192-bit or 256-bit keys. This implementation encrypts 128-bit blocks.
( DES used 56-bit keys and 64-bit blocks )

Hexadecimal


Hexadecimal (also base-16, hexa, or hex) is a numeral system with a radix, or base, of 16. It uses sixteen distinct symbols, most often the symbols 0-9 to represent values zero to nine, and A, B, C, D, E, F (or a through f) to represent values ten to fifteen.

Ascii

Definition:
ASCII

Acii Table:
ASCII codes

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