Using SCHANNEL and TLS
A few areas of computer science are especially intimidating. The two worst for my money are networking and security. Networking because it involves LAL of TLA's, and security because, well, it's security.
Just because these areas are intimidating doesn't mean they're difficult. Especially if you follow the golden rule: don't invent it yourself.
What does this mean? Security protocols and models have been around for ages. There's a few very solid implementations of authentication protocols built into every copy of Windows. Don't write your own when you can use one that has already been tested, and deployed by millions of people!
How hard is it to use these? Not hard at all, as long as you skip becoming intimidated. If you know what a public key is in the abstract (not necessarily how to use it), then in the space of three days I think you can learn to write an authentication engine that uses TLS for authentication. Neat!
I enjoyed learning more about security, and would be happy to share what I learned here, if anyone is interested. If so, then drop me a line or leave a comment, and I'll happily write a few 'how to learn it' blog entries, which will no doubt reference many of the other 'how to do it's out there.
