dangriff's WebLog

Introduction

Hello!  The purpose of this blog is to discuss the exciting things that I work on at Microsoft, including the Cryptographic API 1.0 and the Smartcard API.  I will use this forum to talk about common mistakes and confusing issues that developers face when using these APIs (capi and winscard).  My focus will be on proper usage in terms of program correctness, security, and performance.

 

What are my qualifications?  I’m the Crypto API 1.0 and Smartcard API developer at Microsoft.  I didn’t write the original version of either API set – that happened during the period in my life when I was still focused on partying in college – but I have been responsible for numerous improvements and feature additions and have been working on them for years now, first as a tester, then as a developer. 

 

I appreciate feedback on what I post here – is it useful?  If you’ve got topic requests please let me know.

Published Tuesday, August 12, 2003 10:58 AM by dangriff

Comments

 

Jim said:

Yep, I think it's useful... please post away! I'd be interested in basically anything about either api/technology. Performance dealing with the cryptographic api would be pretty cool to hear about, specifically.
October 23, 2003 11:22 PM
 

Phil Koenig said:

Ever since Symantec started using CryptoAPI for encrypting PC Anywhere sessions back in the latter part of the '90s, there has been a nasty problem which crops up from time-to-time and Symantec is rarely of use in solving it. (they often refer you back to Microsoft, and there is generally no one there you can talk to that can help either)

Under certain circumstances we get a "CryptoAPI is unavailable" message when attempting to use Symmetric encryption with PCAW. It seems that this is often due to some issue where the current login/profile (Win9x especially) does not have access to some keys.

I have struggled with this when it crops up for many years now, it bit me again today and I don't have my previous notes with me.

Any chance of a pointer to info to resolve this once and for all?

I've been poking around the registry looking for the keys that I think I need to transfer from one user branch to another and cannot find them. Following are some URL's which describe the problem:

http://tinyurl.com/22496
http://tinyurl.com/2rlqb

Thanks for any tips . . .

June 29, 2004 5:39 AM
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