Re: How good an encryption algorithm is this?

From: Scott Allen (bitmask_at_[nospam)
Date: 11/24/04 

Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:02:39 -0500

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:35:26 -0000, "Bonj" <benjtaylor at hotpop d0t
com> wrote:

>
>*So, how does the CryptoAPI help me protect the secrecy of the key any
>better than my own algorithm would?*
>

It's not foolproof, but because it's built into the system it has some
advantages, like being about to encrypt a master key with the user's
password and hooking password change events in to re-encrypt. The
system can also expire master keys and tries to keep them out of
memory that can swap to disk and expose the key.

Lots of info here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsecure/html/windataprotection-dpapi.asp 

--
Scott
http://www.OdeToCode.com/blogs/scott/