Customer Reviews

Cryptography for Visual Basic(r) : A Programmer's Guide to the Microsoft(r) CryptoAPI

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Credit where it's due - this is a great book for those who need to use cryptography in their VB programs. I started off reading the only other book available on the subject, and got bogged down in loads and loads of details very quickly. The other book focuses too much on the rather cryptic (!) Win32 Crypto API too early and in too great a detail. The Win32 Crypto API is large, messy and counter-intuitive to put it mildly. On the plus side, the other book does seem to cover a bit more, and in some areas in quite a bit more depth, but I would say that Bondi's book is definitely the easier to read and understand of the two. Also, rather than having to build up an object model as you read through the book (and having to type the relevant parts that you need as you go), Bondi's book comes with a very complete - and understandable - object model on CD that shields you from the horrible Crypto API underneath. The idea of cryptography seems quite straightforward at first, but if you need convincing about the need to abstract away all this mess into a nice clean object hierarchy, then take a look at the one that comes with Bondi's book - there's a ton of code in there and most of it is the kind of stuff you couldn't write without a really in-depth knowledge of the Win32 Crypto API. This is what wrappers are for, and Bondi's makes a great job of making the whole mess useable!!! Microsoft could have made the API much easier, especially for those who only want to use a fraction of the services it provides. Unfortunately, Microsoft made the API as something that you can only realistically use via a decent object model, like the one that comes with Bondi's book. The other book stands as a great reference for those who need to go further, but for those who want to understand what the hell's going on and do things quickly without spending ages becoming a guru before you can do anything, Bondi's book is the book of choice. In short, the Win32 Crypto API is a nasty mess. If you are in a position to do so then buy both and read Bondi's book first. But if you are looking to buy just one book, defininitely get this one.

I've read both this book (Bondi's) and the only other VB crypto book currently in print, Davis Chapman's "Developing Secure Applications with VB." In my opinion, you'll want to buy both books. Chapman's covers more, but it is hard to really understand the underlying cryptography because it is introduced as you go along, in small pieces. And while Chapman shows you how to call all of the CryptoAPI, the CryptoAPI itself comes across as bizarre and illogical. Bondi's first two chapters fix all that, describing cryptography and the CryptoAPI in depth and really clearly. You could read them and then just start using Bondi's COM objects on the CD if you wanted to; they are much more full-featured than Chapman's example code. The rest of Bondi's book describes the guts of his objects, with a lot of vb tricks. The Open Source license the objects come with is a standard one from..., the Ricoh license, so I have no problem with it. There's also a site www.cryptovb.com that has extra examples for Bondi's code. One problem that Bondi highlights in the introduction is that his code doesn't include certificates; but from Chapman's chapter on them, that would be pretty easy to add.

I received my copy of this book about two weeks ago. With only limited knowledge of the Crypto API, I started right in chapter one. Two weeks later I still haven't really gotten to any working sample code as this book covers a *lot* of background info on cryptogrphy.

The wrapper that's included in this book is decent, but most of the functions assume you have the high encryption pack installed on your PC (128-bit IE will do) and the samples just won't work without it. By samples I mean two test apps (!) - there's not a lot of sample code in this book...

Fortunately, the wrapper objects are fairly easy to use and the code is pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, there's not a single bit of information about CRL (certificate revoke lists) in this book, a piece that I needed more than anything.

I'd strongly suggest getting the Sams book "Developing Secure Applications with Visual Basic" and using their wrapper code. Luckily the Sams book includes samples with each chapter, delving into each topic separately (hashes, certs, etc.) so you can understand why you're learning about each subject.

A big limitation of this book is the "Wiley Open Source License" that you must abide by to use the wrapper COM objects - and of course, the entire book is based on these objects. Sections 3.2 and 3.3 of their license states that if you distribute a compiled version of their code, with or without changes, you must also provide two things: the source code (with the executable or a free way to get the source code for your version) and a document describing the changes you made, including dates of the changes. While they may have implied that this source is only necessary for people contributing to the Open Source project, it never says this in the license.

Easy summary: buy the Sams book, you'll thank me.

This book introduced the Wrapper WCCO and code sample of how to use this wrapper (in Appendix). However, when one run the sample code, he will get a lot of error messages. The code is simply not work.

This book was, to put it simply...excellent. The author, Richard Bondi, was very responsive on his bulletin board to any and all questions. The included code was very thorough (only certain aspects of the CryptoAPI were detailed, so review the table of contents first), masterful, and well thought out. The only thing lacking was perhaps more details on implementation, such as key management. Other books, such as Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" (1996) might be a good supplement to delve into details that this book didn't traverse. My company is currently implementing the code from the book (as is!) in an enterprise-wide application. It's that good!

I simply cannot say enough about this book or the author. Richard Bondi has been very responsive to any questions that have been posed on his bulletin board. The book covered pretty much exactly what we needed to know and the sample code was very thorough and well thought out. If anything is lacking in the book, it's some implementation details, such as key security. But, the book "Applied Cryptography" by Bruce Schneier helped a bit on this one.

The chore of every VB programming author is to simplify things so that the dullards can grasp it. He knows this and has succeeded wonderfully. If you want to get your brain around cryptology in a VB sort of way this is the book.

Bondi gets 4 1/2 stars, not five, and put a red flag up, for including the 'Regasaurus' program in the CD and touting it up in the book. The program raises a 'Type Mismatch' error as soon as you click the 'Start' button. I went to Bondi's website to download the latest version and the error is still there. Three years since the book has been published.

Microsoft has released their own CryptoAPI wrapper (Capicom) so you might want to investigate it before you make a big committment to the WCCO objects. But you will need this book in either case.

This is an excellent book on cryptography in general and especially the Windows CryptoAPI. Cryptography and the CryptoAPI is not for the beginner programmer, but this book does a great job of bringing the CryptoAPI to the Visual Basic programmer. It will save you hours of frustration from attempting to use the CryptoAPI using Microsoft's documentation. It also does an excellent job explaining how to call the Windows API functions in general with a great history and explaination of encryption. I recommend this book to any Visual Basic programmer. I think C++ developers will learn from it also.

Recomiendo este libro a aquellas personas que están intesadas en la implantacón de soluciones basadas en criptografia pero que no quieren involucrarse en la teoria que sustentan dichas API. Si bien el libro está orientado a soluciones basadas en Visual Basic, éstas pueden ser implantadas con otros lenguajes de programcaión basados en WINTEL tales como Power Builder, C++ Builder y otros.